still deciding

I've been back over a week--ten days, in fact--and am back at work and everything, and still haven't updated. One issue is that our house is in a shambles--we are having some renovations done, and of course they are taking longer than planned. (Everyone who has ever renovated a house now laughs knowingly.) We tried to have them done while we were away (another knowing laugh here) and, of course, they're not finished. The good thing, I suppose, is that we're here to make some final decisions. The bad thing is that we can't actually unpack all the way. Mark's closet doesn't have a bar for hanging things, for example, and Nick's bed and dresser are not where they belong nor ...well, never mind. Anyway, we're not really unpacked.

The other issue is that I seem to be undergoing blogger angst. Why do I blog? What do I have to say? You've heard it all before--everyone goes through it. So bear with me, or don't, as you choose, and I'll think about what to do next. In the meantime, thanks for reading.

she's back!

Not me, I'm not back, I'm still here in the UK. No, the she who's back is Bridget Jones, reappearing in newspaper columns (no, you can't actually read it there unless you pay...) here as she did in her original incarnation. I think the original Bridget Jones was too late for me: I was already a Smug Married when she coined the term, and the travails of a single woman dating didn't do it for me the way it did for so many others. Yes, I got the allusions to Pride & Prejudice, and yes, some of the scenes did make me laugh out loud, but I didn't read it more than once and, while the movie made me laugh, I didn't run out to read the second installment or to see the second movie.

Until last night. Last night I stayed up far past my bedtime (and on a school night!) reading Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. It didn't make me laugh out loud, as the first one had--rather, it made me cringe. The similarities to Persuasion were just as overwhelming as the P&P ones in the first book, and since Persuasion itself is kind of cringe-making I suppose that all made sense. Though does she have to be such an idiot? I don't mind her making a fool of herself with Colin Firth--who wouldn't? But really, not to know where Germany is? Anne Elliott would be appalled. I think there's an argument to be made about Bridget as feminist heroine, someone who rolls with the punches of contemporary life and manages to rise above her fairly crappy surroundings, but she could do that and not be quite so stupid, and would it really hurt? Couldn't it still be funny?

Still, I kept reading. Like J. K. Rowling, Helen Fielding knows how to hook you with story, with that breathless anticipation of what's coming next. And so now I want to find Bridget in The Independent and see what she's up to, almost ten years on from her first incarnation. I'll let you know what I think.

stopping by

Today was a "down" day--no teaching, no real big responsibilities. So I came in to the computer room to do a little searching (more travel coming up!) and then we all got in a pedal boat and pedalled down the River Isis. The kids and Mark tried punting a couple weeks back and decided not to submit themselves to that kind of humiliation again. So today we pedalled instead and it was glorious, simply glorious! It's our last week here and we're trying to fit in all the things we've not done yet...no way we'll get to them all, though.

Becca's post on packing spurred me to think about my own packing needs. I came here for two months with four pairs of shoes: two pairs of sandals (both are casual but can be worn with a skirt), a pair of clogs, and a pair of dress shoes (I have two black tie dinners to go to). No running shoes--I don't run. No walk/don't walk distinction between the shoes, except that I can't really walk far in the dress shoes (I did about half a mile in them--twice--and that was ok, but no further). I haven't worn socks since I've been here, despite occasional temps in the 50s: it's summer, and I don't wear socks in the summer.

I think, however, that both pairs of sandals will be toast at the end of the summer. I've walked two miles a day in them all summer and they are just not quite as nice now as they were at the start. Still, considering that at home I have a shoe rack hanging on my closet door that 1) doesn't hold all my shoes and 2) prevents the door from closing, I feel pretty good about my shoe limitations here.

not dead yet

I always love that guy in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (it IS that one, isn't it?) who claims he's not dead yet, and the other guy says, you will be soon. Anyway, I'm still here, but it's been crazy busy and my laptop is dead or dying and I'm using a shared computer in a different time zone and, yeah. well. I'm not blogging much. Sorry.

I do still have some things to say, but for the moment all I can remember is my favorite British road signs, so I will leave you with them.

1. "No Hard Shoulder." I hated those eighties shoulderpads, too, but why ban them on the motorway?

2. "Soft Verge." I love this even though I'm pretty sure there's nothing at all weird about it.

3. "Humped Zebra Crossing." I remember cracking up about "zebra crossings" the first time I was in England, over 30 years ago now, but "humped" ones are even better. I keep imagining a cross between a camel and a zebra.

4. "Diverted Traffic." No doubt laughing about the humped zebra crossings.

desert island kitchen

Sometimes I've played a game with my sister, and maybe with others as well, where you list what you would need on a desert island. Mostly we focus on what one spice it would be, if you could have only one. When I've traveled to strange kitchens (beach rentals, mostly) I've always brought a good supply of cooking stuff: olive oil, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, cinnamon, cumin, garlic...the list goes on.

OK, we're not on a desert island here. But we've also been reluctant to buy up various spices and condiments (especially) since our time here is short and we don't want to be wasteful. This has meant that I've made spaghetti with no spices (thank you, Ragu!), stir fry with sauce from a jar, and tuna casserole with neither a whisk nor a cheese grater, though I still managed to make white sauce and melt cheese into it.

I did buy garlic. And salt. And parmesan cheese (OK, "Italian style cheese"--remember, no cheese grater!). So we've had garlic bread, and been able to doctor up the Ragu.

But what I'm realizing is how ridiculous my desert island choices always were. It was usually basil or cinnamon. I haven't baked here, or even felt like it (again, that has partly to do with the difficulty of buying small enough quantities--and the fact that there are no measuring utensils in my kitchen!). And I'm doing fine without most of the things I think I need desperately at home. In fact, the kids are probably happier that their food isn't all that spiced! (I do get a number of my meals in the college, so I'm not totally bereft of edible food...though college food has its ups and downs, too--perhaps more on that in another post.)

I still may buy basil before we leave. But first I'll have to learn to pronounce it "correctly"--one of our first days here I ordered a basil, mozarella, and tomato sandwich in a cafe, and the proprietor (Indian or Pakistani, in a French-named cafe, for what it's worth) thought I ordered bacon, not basil. "It's ba-a-zill" he corrected me. (No problem with my tomayto instead of tomahto, however...) Ah, English!

here we are

I'd been planning a post about cooking in someone else's kitchen, but it seems a bit callous to go on with that when we're 100 miles from London. But really what I have to say about that is that it's very interesting teaching in Oxford right now. We've been talking in lectures and classes about (among many other things) the Battle of Britain, and most of the news kept reminding us of that as well: Londoners, the British in general, we are reminded, know how to cope, will not be shaken, will not be terrorized.

I know that Giuliani had that sort of rhetoric after 9/11, and I know as well that the loss of the WTC was in both symbolic and real terms very different from these smaller attacks, but I'm just struck by how quickly things are getting back to normal here, and how easy it is (really) to feel relatively unscathed, 100 miles away. In 2001, 100 miles from the Pentagon and another few hundred from NYC felt way too close, and no one's life (that I knew) went on as normal for many weeks. Again, I know the comparison is inexact, and I don't want to read too much into it. But the fact is I spent yesterday afternoon walking around Oxford as if nothing had happened. And at the moment that seems really wrong, but there it is.

really remote blogging

In England for the summer, not sure how often I'll be posting or reading other blogs, but I'll try to drop in every now and then.

Technology update: it is indeed possible to live without a phone for a week. Not so the internet.

Father's Day

If my family was bad about Mother's Day (and we were) we were even worse about Father's Day. I don't remember ever even discussing why we weren't celebrating it, let alone actually doing anything for it.

But really, that's too bad. After all, there's never anything wrong with going out to brunch. Or dinner. Or even both.

I have heard that while Mother's Day is the biggest day of the year for florists and card sellers, Father's Day is the biggest for collect calls.

That's ridiculous. It's so ridiculous I hope it's a joke, even if Garrison Keillor is passing it along as if it were true.

We took Mark to the river for a picnic. There was a dead fish lying in the river kinda close to where we were picnicking, but we managed to ignore that and eat our chicken and carrot sticks and grape tomatoes and rolls. The kids waded out into the water. Nick got in up to his waist, and for once there was actually a towel in the back of the car for him to sit on.

Then there were presents and cake and ice cream when we got home. Small gifts, but fun ones. A book (yes, I bought my husband a kids' book), a mix CD (Mariah made it), a cup Nick glazed in school and a "hand" from Nick: he traced his hand on construction paper five times, and wrote promises on each one. "I will set the table." "I will pack my lunch." "I will feed the cat." "I will wash the car." "I will help cut the grass." He delivered on three of them today.

day lilies

It seems too early for day lilies. I remember them as an August flower, blooming when everything else is too hot to care. Maybe that's a New England memory. In any event, they're out now in our backyard, our imported day liles. They sat in a bucket for almost two years, I think, when we first moved here, before we got them in the ground, and they have repaid that neglect with a glorious display, all red-orange and vibrant.

These days pretty much all I'm good for is dead-heading day lilies. I pull off the dead blooms the next day and throw them out in the hope that this will save some energy for newer blooms. It's a mindless and satisfying task.

My Harry Potter post

I have always liked the Harry Potter books. Jack Zipes thinks they're sexist and derivative (among other things) and other critics have found other problems with them. Bah, I say!

Well, not really. Yes, I agree with Zipes and other feminist critics that Rowling replicates traditional gender roles. Hermione is only a side-kick, other than McGonagall the women professors are ludicrous or stereotyped, other than Hermione the girls are pretty lame as well. (I have high hopes for Ginny Weasley in the next book, though...) Mrs. Weasley stays home and worries about the kids while Mr. Weasley goes to work--same as the Dursleys, in fact. (Hmm, anyone else notice the near-rhyme of those names?)

And, yes, they have become a marketing bonanza, so that kids who've never even picked up a book know who the characters are and what products associated with them you can buy. Right now, in fact.

But there I was at one in the morning still reading--that must count for something! Rowling does a few things brilliantly, I think. One is, she has pulled together elements of a variety of popular genres: the school story, the mystery, the education of a wizard (think Wizard of Earthsea for that one), the cosmic fight between good and evil (Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia), the orphan story (Harry is Cinderella, down to the abuse by step-family), and rolled them all into one. Yes, that's derivative, as Zipes says, but it's also innovative, in that I don't think we've seen quite this combination of genres before. And they are genres that do have something to tell us, that continue to nourish--so why not keep at them?

The books are also full of incident. This annoys people who don't read them--it's relatively easy to distill the plot of any one novel down to its bare elements (Harry confronts Voldemort or his minion(s) and wins, with help from Dumbledore and/or his friends), but that doesn't really convey the texture of the books. Mark, watching the first movie, noted that the "plot" didn't really get going until the last half hour or so, and he was right, but all those incidents along the way (the troll in the bathroom, Hagrid's dragon, etc.) are part of the pleasure of the novel. The novels are also very funny in places (much funnier than the two movies from the series that I've seen); the Weasley twins account for a lot of the comic relief, but so does Dumbledore, who seems to be based on Gandalf--a seemingly doddering fool who blows smoke rings (Gandalf) or has a sweet tooth (Dumbledore) but turns out to be a nearly-omniscient figure of immense power and divine wisdom.

And while we know the basic outlines of each novel, each one also manages a surprise. "Good" people turn out to be "bad" (Scabbers, Ginny, Mad-Eye Moody) and "bad" people turn out to be good (Snape, over and over again, but also Sirius Black). And then good guys make mistakes, like Cornelius Fudge or Harry or even Dumbledore. The concepts of good and evil are becoming more complex in these novels--unlike in, say, The Chronicles of Narnia, where other than one relatively predictable "traitor" who makes good in each book, good and evil are clear and easy to discern. In this Rowling is doing something closer to what Pullman does in His Dark Materials: calling into question the categories, but suggesting (as is typical in children's fantasy) that nonetheless children have almost an instinctive ability to sort them out.

So I'm interested to read the next one, though I doubt I'll stand in line for it. Then again, maybe I will: we'll be in England then, and it might be fun to see how Harry Potter mania works on the other side of the pond.

pot, meet kettle

So it's pretty clear where my obsessive reader came from. I decided I should re-read the Harry Potter books, both because I'll be teaching #1 (again) this summer, and because I wanted to be prepared for the new one when it arrives. While I was away, Nick stayed up until 2 a.m. one night reading #4. He just forgot to stop, he said, and no one came in to tell him to do so. Sigh.

So what was I doing at 1 a.m. Saturday?

Busted.

I have now, however, finished re-reading all five, so am ready for the next.

(What do I think of them? Oh, that's another subject...)

back again

not surprisingly, it was easier to find a few minutes to blog while I was on vacation than now that I'm back into whatever our summer "routine" is. The kids still have school but there's no more homework, and Mariah only has half days next week for exams, so things are definitely winding down. Naturally, therefore, Nick has come down with strep throat. After he burst into tears at the dinner table Mark mentioned to me that a note had come home last week announcing that the kids had been exposed to scarlet fever. Despite the scary-sounding name and my memories of Mary in the Little House books going blind as a side-effect of it, scarlet fever is really just strep with a rash--and Mary's blindness actually had other causes. Nick, however, just has regular old strep and a bunch of bug bites (which raised our anxiety last night, since they seemed potentially rash-like). So now he has taken tylenol and amoxicillin and wants to go out and ride his bike.

I'm trying not to be boring here but frankly the heat and the humidity in Richmond, after the lovely weather in the Bay Area, have me a little slow and stupid. (more than usual, that is) So maybe no more blogging until I reacclimate?

vacation

Are you supposed to be on vacation while you're "helping" with a new baby? That's about how it's been here...sleep late, wake up to fresh latte, lounge around, play with the baby, play with the toddler, read a little.

So I'm pretty boring right now. Brownies just came out of the oven and bread dough is rising for flatbread, and that's about the extent of my accomplishments.

Oh, I did finish reading Rebecca, which I've been meaning to read for years. That and the Michel Faber neo-Victorian novel, The Crimson Petal and the White. Rebecca channels Jane Eyre in interesting ways--much younger, plain, working girl marries older, more experienced, wealthy man with a past. I read an interesting article by Rey Chow arguing that both put the man's story at the center, as in the end it is all about him and his status that determines the heroine's story. I think maybe, though less in the case of Jane Eyre than Rebecca. The creepy thing about Rebecca, of course, is that the dowdy girl falls even more in love with her husband when she discovers that he's murdered his first wife, that's he's never loved her. It is almost as if the murder restores his past to her, makes him the innocent with no history that he also wants her to be. (Don't we have to suspect she isn't, really, as well? What else is she doing as a companion to a wealthy American woman in Monte Carlo?)

Faber's book explores the seamy underbelly of Victorian London, detailing the rise into gentility of a whore named Sugar. She, too, needs to be defined through a man, though she's far more open and self-aware about this than her real Victorian--or even modernist--counterparts. What I find intriguing about The Crimson Petal and the White is the way that the more genteel she becomes, the more maternal--she discovers her inner "mother," as it were, when she has the money and the opportunity to do so.

Both Rebecca and Jane Eyre project maternity for their heroines, though only Jane Eyre delivers (sorry, no pun intended). But parenthood is so secondary to the marital relationship--what's important for Jane is that she gives Rochester an heir, for example--that it's hard to imagine either of them as a mother, or motherhood as in any way transformative for them. Du Maurier had children, Brontë¨did not, so it's not a case of personal experience driving the narratives so much, I think, as cultural expectations: marriage was expected to produce children, but children were not expected to transform either the marriage or the mother.

HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE :: Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries

I'm proud to say I routinely teach one of these books, and also a few on the "honorable mention" (funny concept) list. I also routinely teach at least one book on the same folks' list of ten books every student should read in college, so I may be an equal-opportunity offender.

I do understand that there are harmful ideas in the world, and we need to debate them. But ad hominem attacks on the authors (Engels was a "limousine leftist," Betty Friedan was "for a time even the lover of a young Communist physicist working on atomic bomb projects in Berkeley’s radiation lab with J. Robert Oppenheimer”--guilt by association, anyone?) are not effective argument. And this list frankly just seems silly, though I do wonder whether any of my students will complain about having to read books that appear on it. Or whether their parents will.

reading to toddlers

It's been a while since I spent any quality time reading to a toddler. (Or a pre-schooler. I forget which category three-year-olds fall into, actually.) Anyway. It's been, in fact, almost five years since I spent any significant time reading to a three-year-old. So I had forgotten that the best thing you can do for a three-year-old, in the reading arena, is read the same book over and over. And over. And over.

Luckily my nephew has excellent taste. So we've been spending some time sitting on the couch reading the Little Bear books, by Else Holmelund Minarik (illustrations by Maurice Sendak).

I love these books.

I love them because Mother Bear tells her son he can't have the things he wishes for, but still gives him what he needs. I love them because Grandmother Bear tells Little Bear a story about his mother. I love them because Grandfather Bear tells Little Bear a story about a goblin. And I love them because Little Bear makes his own birthday soup.

So I don't mind at all reading them over and over again. But check with me again at the end of the week.

how they get here

Ever since this blog began (August 2003, if you're counting) I have gotten hits from people doing google searches for the "highest IQ ever recorded." This is completely bizarre to me.

Here's the entry in total that brings up those hits:

Wednesday, August 27, 2003

The Highest IQ Ever Recorded
Can I just say that this is not what I was talking about when I was talking about the Lord's Prayer? Sheesh! (And thanks to Diane at Nobody Knows Anything for pointing it out...) The Highest IQ Ever Recorded


I can't help but imagine that the folks who find that are disappointed. And now they can find it twice!

Why is this a source of such fascination?

remote blogging

So, do I look different? I always feel different in California, as if somehow the light and the climate conspire to change me as well. Same old me, though, just in a different environment. I'm visiting the best houseguests ever, and am hoping that I can do them some justice in return. So far my duties have involved basic aunt-stuff: holding the baby, walking with his big brother so he can be nursed, reading books to his big brother, that sort of thing. At some point I may cook something, but so far I have just been waited on hand and foot, even though they're the new parents at the moment. It's a rough life.

party all the time

We had a party this weekend. We couldn't remember the last time we had had one, though we do remember hosting a big bash in the spring of 1999 after I got tenure. Could that possibly have been the last party? Anyway, it was obviously time for another one.

But having a party is no small undertaking. First, we had to clean the house. This involved weeding the bookshelves, in the (as it turned out) vain hope that doing so would make room for all the books on the floor to be shelved. Mmm, not so much. But still, the shelves now actually hold books we might read, or have read and would read again, instead of random stuff that we can't remember owning. Well, there's a lot of that, too, but at least it's been looked at.

Then there was lots of throwing away. I am a clutterer, and I can't bear to throw paper away in case I might need it again. But when every horizontal surface in the house is covered with paper, to the extent that said horizontal surfaces can no longer be seen, and dinner at the dining room table is an impossibility, then I can throw stuff away. Bags and bags of it. So there are many bags of paper to be recycled, many books to be freecycled or otherwise disposed of, and much clearer surfaces. Mark then cleaned floors, for which he deserves a medal.

Then there was baking. I can't have a party without baking. This time I decided to make cupcakes, because...well, why not? I made two kinds: lemon cupcakes with lemon cream and cinnamon-scented devil's food cupcakes. For reasons known best to epicurious, the lemon cupcake recipe, doubled, makes twelve cupcakes, while the devil's food recipe, halved, makes 21. That seemed like plenty. I learned the cupcake liners are probably a good thing: I didn't use them (seemed wasteful) and the cupcakes ended up sticking to the plates I put them on. The lemon ones were a tiny bit dry, but that may have been my fault, and the devil's food ones were very tasty, especially with a basic frosting off the back of a confectioner's sugar box. The frosting was a little too sweet so I added some espresso powder to it--yum!

The other baking was bread: the rosemary filoncino from No Need to Knead, and a flatbread made of of the pizza dough recipe from the same book. Both were completely devoured--I especially liked how the flatbread worked out.

Then there were mushrooms and artichoke hearts to marinate. I was a little over-achievey at this point--but I was also trying to keep myself occupied because Mariah was out with friends and wouldn't be back until two a.m. and there was a new driver involved and I needed to think about other things. She came home right on time and all was well, thank you very much. I guess this stuff will get easier.

That was Saturday. Sunday Mark grilled vegetables and I made pesto with grape tomatoes over curly pasta, and there were crackers and cheese and some salami and fresh mozarella and humus and olives and baby carrots and beer and wine and that was enough.

Then, though I carefully put chairs out in the backyard, and tried to spread things around the house, people gathered around the dining room table where all the food was and just stood there. And they talked and ate and drank and complimented the food (yes, this is key) and went away many hours later.

Teenagers hung out listening to Mark's and my old records (yes, we still have a working turntable), children played in the yard, and adults were (mostly) able to enjoy each other and not run around after little ones.

And there were leftovers to eat the next day, and the house is still (relatively) clean and the bookcases still look good.

We may have another party some day.

Reading Report

I've been re-reading the Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy this week. Mostly it's for a paper I'm writing, but I'm enjoying really spending some time with them as well. Pullman's a gorgeous writer, and he says things that surprise me all the time. For example, there's a little paragraph about how good liars aren't necessarily very imaginative. It's an interesting thought. I'm not entirely sure I buy it--or, if I do, I need to know the difference between being a good liar and being a good fiction-writer--but it's intriguing to think about nonetheless.

I'm struck this time by the way he thinks and writes about mothers. In the first book, The Golden Compass, we find out about a mother who is cold and rejecting, who puts her career before her child, and who is cruel and violent to children throughout. In the second book, The Subtle Knife we have a mother who is incompetent, and whose son cares for her. (We have some other failed parents, too, though it might not be their fault.) And in the third book, The Amber Spyglass, the mother from the first one comes back and it's not clear if she's suddenly discovered maternity or if she's faking. There are, I should add, some pretty absent fathers as well, and it's clear we're not meant (I think, anyway) to judge them as harshly as the failed mothers. (The one in book two is actually pretty sympathetic, but she's a failure as a mother nonetheless.) The third book also gives us a former nun, released from her vows but still unmarried and definitely not a mother, as one of the most maternal figures.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, and it's not terribly relevant to my paper, so I'm just throwing it out there to ponder.

More on successful women, sick husbands

We were talking about this at dinner last night: midlife mama: successful women, sick husbands

Nick hit the nail on the head: "You make more money than Daddy, right, Mommy? And he's really healthy!"

Well, yeah, we like to think so. Of course, as we've already established, I have a truly feminist and egalitarian partner in Mark. So the kids had fun thinking about why people would think that being married to an ambitious woman might negatively affect a man's health. But basically, they thought the report was a crock.

It's such fun raising skeptics.