Bleary

I’ve been studying for my big exams for six months and they’re coming up in less than two, and I feel like this:

My head is so full of information, I can hardly see out anymore! Phew! Maybe I should clear my head a little…

Image courtesy of Renaissance Lit

Curtain Textiles

I’ve been meaning to make curtains for our kitchen and front door windows for a while now but haven’t been able to find fabric that I liked. Then, I came across these prints on fabric.com:

Aren’t they pretty? I’m loving the antiqued colors, the charming script, and the flower names in Latin. They make me feel like I’ve discovered a century-old botany book on the back shelf of a used book store!

I could use some advice, though. I love both prints and think they work beautifully together, but I’m not sure how to work them both into the curtains.  I’d thought about using the floral for the front of the curtains and lining them with the script.  How does that sound? Any other brilliant ideas from you sewing and decorating experts?

Flowers in Winter

My husband surprised me with flowers yesterday afternoon. What a wonderful treat in the dead of winter! I’m a very lucky, happy woman.

They Just Made a Terrible Life Choice

After holing myself up in my office and reading like mad all day today, this made me smile:

Watching the Birds

Remember how I posted a while back about our bird feeders?  Well, Fermi has finally discovered them.  He’s taken to climbing up on our dining room chairs and peering  out the window so he can see them.  He’s turning into quite the little birder…

Monday Poem: “At the Vet’s” by Maura Stanton

Fermi’s been getting all his booster shots and last week we took him in to get neutered, so we’ve been spending a lot of time at the vet’s lately.  I think that’s why I found this poem so moving when I heard Garrison Keillor read it on The Writer’s Almanac a week and a half ago. You can listen here.

At the Vet’s
by Maura Stanton

The German shepherd can’t lift his hindquarters
off the tiled floor. His middle-aged owner
heaves his dog over his shoulder, and soon
two sad voices drift from the exam room
discussing heart failure, kidneys, and old age
while a rushing woman pants into the office
grasping a terrier with trembling legs
she found abandoned in a drainage ditch.
It’s been abused, she says, and sits down,
The terrier curled in her lap, quaking
as the memory of something bad returns and returns.
She strokes its ears, whispering endearments
while my two cats, here for routine checkups,
peer through the mesh of their old green carrier,
the smell of fear so strong on their damp fur
I taste it as I breathe. Soon the woman,
Like the receptionist with her pen in mid-air,
Is listening, too, hushed by the duet
swelling in volume now, the vet’s soprano
counterpointed by the owner’s baritone
as he pleads with her to give him hope, the vet
trying to be kind, rephrasing the truth
over and over until it becomes a lie
they both pretend to accept. The act’s over.
His dog’s to stay behind for ultrasound
and kidney tests, and the man, his face
whipped by grief as if he were caught in a wind,
hurries past us and out the front door,
leaving the audience—cats, terrier, people—
sunk in their places, too stunned to applaud.

Maria Kalman’s Honey Cake

For Christmas, my brother-in-law and his partner gave me a delightful gift: Maria Kalman’s The Principles of Uncertainty.    It’s a book unlike anything I’ve ever seen before—a sort of memoir, a collection of philosophical musings on life and death, and an assortment of beautiful art.  It’s a lovely little book, and it was a perfect Christmas gift for me. Especially since I’m doing so much heady reading for exams right now and don’t feel up to much leisure reading, an illustrated book was just the thing. Here’s a sampling of Kalman’s work:

The main reason I’m writing about this little book here, though, is to tell you about Kalman’s honey cake recipe.  For Kalman, honey cake is part of what she describes as “heaven on earth”: “For me, heaven on earth is my aunt’s kitchen in Tel Aviv….The kitchen is small, spare and shiny. We drink tea and eat honey cake in the hot stillness of the afternoon….There is nothing illusory in this tiny heaven. I am silent with gratitude. I will go and bake a honey cake and that’s all.”  Here are Kalman’s drawings of her aunt, the cake, and the kitchen:

Sort of enchanting, aren’t they? Best of all, Kalman appends her honey cake recipe at the end of the book so you can make it yourself.  And of course, after reading the book and enjoying the pictures, I wanted to do just that.

I’d like to tell you that the cake turned out beautifully, and that I made it to Kalman’s heaven.  Unfortunately, my first attempt, a week and a half ago, turned out like this:

Yep, that’s charcoal.  Here’s what happened. When I finished baking the cake, I took it out of the oven and set it on the stove top, still in the bundt pan, to cool.  Then, I tried to heat some water for tea on the same stove top, but instead of turning on the burner under the tea kettle I turned on the burner under the cake.  By the time I realized what I’d done five minutes later, the cake was going up in smoke.  Arrgh. I was not a happy camper.

Fortunately, though, this story does have a happy ending.  I tried to make the cake again yesterday, and it turned out much better:

We took it to a birthday party last night for a couple of our friends, and I’m happy to report that it was a hit. Moreover, if I can say so myself, it really was kind of heavenly—a sort of mild spice cake that made for a great compliment to a piping hot cup of Earl Grey tea.

Here’s Kalman’s recipe:

Honey Cake

Ingredients:
4 jumbo or large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup corn oil
3/4 dark honey
3 cups flour
1 level tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in a tablespoon of water
1 and 1/2 cups very strong tea (3 tea bags)
3 teaspoons each of: ground cloves, cinnamon, ginger, cocoa

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Make the tea so that it has time to cool while you do everything else.
Smear a bundt pan with butter and a fine coat of bread crumbs.
With medium speed mixer, mix sugar and eggs. Add one egg at a time until blended.
Slowly pour in oil.
Add honey.
Mix baking powder into flour.
Slowly alternate some flour and some tea into batter.
Mix spices together and pour into batter.
Add baking soda.
Bake for approx. 45 minutes.

Finally, Kalman’s book started as an Op-Extra for the New York Times, and she’s still writing.  If you’re interested, here’s her latest work, And the Pursuit of Happiness.

Loving Southern California Mediterranean

The Southern California Mediterranean style of architecture and decorating isn’t usually my thing, but these pictures from yesterday’s Design*Sponge are definitely making me reconsider.  They’re taken from Kathryn M. Ireland’s design book, Creating a Home.

Keeping Warm: Lying on the Floor Vents

No, I haven’t been lying on our vents, but Fermi certainly has.  He’s a cat after my own heart—he knows how to make a beeline to the heat source and then keep all the warmth for himself.  See?

Twig Hutchinson

For the last few days, I’ve been poring over the designs of Twig Hutchinson.  I love her style—so elegant yet cozy.  Aren’t her images beautiful?

Monday Poem: Sonnet 65 by William Shakespeare

I found out last week that my university is hosting what they’re calling a “Sonnet Fest” next month.  Basically, a bunch of people from around the university—students, professors, even college deans and the president himself—are going to be reading through all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets aloud in the space of about 4 hours.  I’m so excited!  It’s so rare these days that we take the time to read poems aloud, and it’s even rarer that we read an entire collection of poems aloud.  I am definitely going to take advantage of the opportunity!

In anticipation of the fun, here is my favorite of Shakespeare’s sonnets:

Sonnet 65
by William Shakespeare

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O! how shall summer’s honey breath hold out,
Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand call hold his swift food back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O! none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

Benjamin Britten’s Solo Cello Suites

I’ve long been a fan of solo cello music.  To my mind, the rich, haunting tone of the cello is the best sound in the orchestra, and I relish those moments when it gets to come out from under the violins and sing alone. Unfortunately, though, those moments seem to be rare.  There are Bach’s famous solo cello suites of course, which I love, but to me at least there doesn’t seem to be much else.  Which is why I was so excited when I came upon Britten’s solo cello suites recently.  They’re pretty different from Bach’s—over 300 years of music does stand between them afterall!—but they’re absolutely gorgeous.  I’ve been playing them on repeat on my computer for the last several days, and I’m completely hooked.

Here is the first of the three suites in its entirety.  I know it’s a bit long, but I just couldn’t bear to post only an excerpt!  Perhaps you can enjoy it while you do something else…

Parts I-IV:

Parts V-VII:

Parts VIII-IX:

An Image

I’ll be honest. Tonight I’m tired and out of words. So, here is an image instead, and here are seventy-one beautiful stories written about it by children at the Tate.

Marc Chagall, The Poet Reclining

Mug Hunting

We’re in the market for some good coffee mugs. We have a few, but we always seem to be running out.  Here’s the root of the problem: we decided not to ask for any mugs on our wedding registry because we wanted to create our own eclectic mug collection.  Eight months after the wedding, though, we’re not actually collecting eclectic mugs.  Yesterday, I decided that this needed to change, and I started hunting for cute mugs on etsy.  Both my husband and I like the idea of handthrown pottery, and I’m into pale greens, dark reds, and ivories, so these are what I found.  What do you think?
from Misspottery:

from TwistedRiverClay:

from justmare:
from khphillips:

from A.S.K. Pottery:

Keeping Warm: Fingerless Gloves

An ingenious birthday gift from my husband: fingerless gloves. They’re great! I no longer have to take my gloves off to find my keys in the bottom of my bag or get stuff out of my wallet. (If you live in a cold climate, you know just how bothersome this can be!) No, I just pull back the little flap on my gloves and secure it with the cute little button. Viola, my fingers are free! Best of all, I can wear gloves when I’m reading and still turn pages and annotate my margins. For some reason, my hands go ice cold when I sit down to read. But now, problem solved.  Thanks, my love!

Monday Poem: “Love (3)” by George Herbert

Here’s a poem I fell in love with when I read it for a class last semester. Like so many of Herbert’s poems, it’s simple yet rich. Enjoy!

Love (3)
by George Herbert

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack’d any thing.

A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.

How Much Does a Lutefisk Weigh?

So here’s an unusual and wonderfully bizarre Christmas story for you—the story of how I won a Christmas lutefisk contest. “Lutefisk?” you ask. “What is lutefisk?” I confess I didn’t know either until a few months ago when I learned that it’s a special Norwegian dish eaten at Christmas—dried whitefish prepared with lye. If that doesn’t sound appetizing to you, you’re not the only one. Famously, Norwegians either love the stuff or think it’s vile.

Anyway, here’s my story: shortly before Thanksgiving a Norwegian relative of my husband named Morten sent out a picture of a lutefisk to fifty or so of his American relatives and challenged all of us to guess how much it weighed. Here’s the picture:

As you can probably imagine, guessing the weight of the lutefisk from just that picture was no easy task. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, we—my husband, his parents, my parents, and I—all tried to think up as many ways of calculating the fish’s weight as we could. We researched lutefisk on the internet, my physicist husband tried to work out a geometrical analysis of the fish, and we went to a grocery store to look at and weigh some cod (from which lutefisk is often made). My husband’s stepmom even called Seattle’s Pike Place Market to ask a fish merchant some questions about cod! In the end, we decided the fish must weigh between 3 and 6 lbs, and shortly before Christmas we all emailed our guesses, accurate to three decimal places, to Morten. My husband, always the math guru, guessed pi (3.141 lbs), and I, counting on my lucky number 4, guessed 4.444 lbs. Trying to guess the fish’s weight had been a fun exercise, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t win.

Imagine my surprise, then, when a few days after we submitted our guesses, I got an early morning call from Norway and learned from the excited Morten that I’d won! Turns out the lutefisk weighed 4.440 lbs, and I was the closest guesser! Morten emailed all of the relatives this picture of the same woman who’d held the fish in the first picture holding a sign telling its weight:

As a prize, Morten sent my husband and I a cute little Norwegian man called a nisse. In Scandinavian folklore, nisses help Santa Claus make gifts for Christmas—something like American elves. Then, on Christmas eve, Norwegians set bowls of porridge by their doors for the nisses to thank them for all of their hard work. Here’s our nisse, whom we’ve affectionately named Bjorn (a good Norwegian name!), complete with his bowl of porridge:

Many thanks to Morten for a jolly good time and for our little nisse! When we set him out every Christmas, we’ll remember all the fun of the 2009 Norwegian lutefisk contest!

Home Sweet Home

A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you! We’ve finally returned home from a long and happy holiday, and I’m feeling refreshed and ready to get back to work. We spent Christmas and my birthday, which happens to fall on the twenty-eighth of December, with my husband’s family in Ohio. Then, on New Year’s Eve, we flew to my parents’ home in California and spent a long weekend soaking up the sunshine. It was a blissful break, and I feel like I have so much to blog about now! The only real hiccup in the trip was a slight airport glitch: one of our flights got canceled, so we had to spend an extra five hours sitting in our terminal. It all turned out for the best, though, because I got a chance to snap some photos of an unsung but truly important part of so many people’s holiday festivities: flying.  Even though I usually dread flying, I think the blues and reds and fluorescent yellows and oranges of airport bustle have their own beauty.  And, the foggy, slanted light of late December and early January were especially picturesque.  Take a look:

Monday Poem: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

Here’s a poem you were probably forced to read or even memorize in grade school.  Maybe because I had to read it in school or because my ninth grade teacher told me it was about Santa Claus (!), I’ve always had a hard time taking it seriously.  But, I have to admit it feels apropos this evening: Christmas is upon us, our lake is frozen, our neighborhood is covered in a blanket of snow, and tonight is the darkest night of the year—winter solstice. And, as always, I have miles to read before I sleep, miles to read before I sleep…

Stopping by Woods on a Snowing Evening
Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of the easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

The Grinch

Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!—the animated version, not the new version with Jim Carrey—is hands down my favorite Christmas movie.  I love Boris Karloff’s narration, I love the funny whos (especially the cute little ones), I love the poor dog that has to wear tied-on antlers and tug the Grinch’s over-sized sled, and of course I love the weasley green Grinch with his sly grin.  Here’s the movie’s best song, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”:

Let It Snow

Well, Christmas has officially arrived: we got our first big(ish) snow today!  Being cold-blooded, I usually don’t like snow much, but even I got excited today about our blanket of white.

Here’s the lake covered with a layer of snow:

And here are some snowy bits of our neighborhood:

I guess we won’t have to dream of a white Christmas!

A House to Drool Over

I just had to say that I’m really loving this house from yesterday’s Design*Sponge:

Handmade Christmas Cards

I guess I’m feeling ambitious and crafty because I decided to make all of our Christmas cards this year.  It’s been pretty time consuming and I don’t know if I’ll do it again, but I like the idea of sending out at least our first family Christmas letter in handmade cards. I went with the easiest design I could think of—cutting shapes out of pretty paper and taping them to blank cards—but I think they look nice.  Making them has been a good break from all the end of semester madness!

Monday Poem: “Psalm 2″ by John Milton

This Monday, it seems appropriate to attach one of the poems I’ve been mulling over the last few weeks for my final papers: one of Milton’s Psalm translations. If you feel like it, I highly recommend reading Milton’s translation against the biblical version. Milton makes some really interesting changes to the original that bespeak his particular theological and political inclinations, and I think they force us to read the meaning of the Psalm in a new way.

Psalm 2
by John Milton

Why do the Gentiles tumult, and the Nations
Muse a vain thing, the Kings of th’earth upstand
With power, and Princes in their Congregations
Lay deep their plots together through each Land,
Against the Lord and his Messiah dear?
Let us break off, they say, by strength of hand
Their bonds, and cast from us, no more to wear,
Their twisted cords: he who in Heaven doth dwell
Shall laugh, the Lord shall scoff them, then severe
Speak to them in his wrath, and in his fell
And fierce ire trouble them; but I, saith hee,
Anointed have my King (though ye rebel)
On Sion my holi’ hill. A firm decree
I will declare; the Lord to me hath said,
Thou art my Son, I have begotten thee
This day; ask of me, and the grant is made;
As thy possession I on thee bestow
Th’Heathen, and as thy conquest to be sway’d
Earth’s utmost bounds: them shalt thou bring full low
With Iron Scepter bruis’d, and them disperse
Like to a potter’s vessel shiver’d so.
And now be wise at length, ye Kings averse,
Be taught, ye Judges of the earth; with fear
Jehovah serve, and let your joy converse
With trembling; kiss the Son lest he appear
In anger and ye perish in the way,
If once his wrath take fire like fuel sere.
Happy all those who have in them their stay.

Christmas Cookies

We baked Christmas cookies yesterday to take to our neighbors.  We made peanut blossoms, an old Christmas cookie staple in my family:

And we made traditional Christmas sugar cookies and had lots of fun decorating them and making a glorious mess:

Academic Earth

Here’s something I found on the second fig last weekend that’s gotten me excited: academicearth.org. It’s a site where you watch lectures and online courses by professors at major universities for free! There are lectures on a wide variety of subjects, but I’m most excited about a course taught by Yale’s John Rogers on Milton’s poetry. I think I’ll watch at least part of it to help me prepare for my exams. Take a look!

Monday Poem: “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree”

Since Christmas is in the air, I thought this Monday I’d post my favorite Christmas carol.  My choir sang it when I was in high school, and I’ve loved it ever since—I love the simple but beautiful melody, and I love that the words, though actually written by an unknown New Englander, sound to me like a medieval lyric.

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.

His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne’er can tell,
His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne’er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.

For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought:
I missed of all; but now I see
‘Tis found in Christ the apple tree.

I’m weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest a while:
I’m weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest a while:
Under the shadow I will be,
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive:
This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive:
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.

Here is the boys choir of King’s College, Cambridge, performing Elizabeth Poston’s arrangement of the poem:

Fawlty Towers

So, my husband and I made the discovery yesterday that we can stream all of the Fawlty Towers episodes off Netflix. Hmm… I’m afraid this may mean that we won’t be getting much done over the next few weeks.

Here’s one of the show’s more famous moments, my favorite so far.  It’s post WWII Europe, and several Germans are staying as guests at Basil Fawlty’s hotel in England.  Basil Fawlty is played by the always brilliant John Cleese.

O Christmas Tree

We set up our Christmas tree two weekends ago.  I know, I know, we were early.  But we were just so excited to set up our first tree together! Besides, we wanted to have it up when my parents came to visit for Thanksgiving.  I’m really happy with how it turned out—simple but cozy.  Even my husband, who originally insisted on colored lights and metallic balls (horror of horrors), decided he liked it in the end.

I hand-sewed some easy plush ornaments (the first one commemorates 2009, our first Christmas together under the same roof),

we mixed in some pine cones for a natural effect,

and added some cinnamon sticks for scent,

and here’s the finished product!

No, I’m not dead

So if you’d concluded I was killed or abducted by aliens,  you wouldn’t be that far off.  The past few weeks have been extraordinarily busy for me—especially these last few days—and I’ve been pretty much dead to the world. I kept very happy and busy over the Thanksgiving holiday with lots of family (more of that anon), and, then, ever since we got back home on Sunday I’ve been slaving away on a paper.  Ugh.  I actually spent the entire 24-hour period before it was due writing non-stop.  Not something I’d recommend.  By the time hour 23 rolled around, I was a loopy mess, and I’m afraid my paper may have been too.  But, the good news is, it’s turned in.  Phew!  Back to living and blogging normally.  My apologies for my absence.