Saturday, September 10, 2011

Favorite book becomes a movie!


Can't remember if I've blogged about one of my favorite books, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. So nice to see that its film version, The Hedgehog, opened this weekend. 3rd daughter encouraged me to read the book after she found it by accident at her library and loved it. Me, too!

Sunday, September 4, 2011

The Adam's Apple Jump

Check out The Nonverbal Dictionary. Scroll down the home page to get to the A-Z list.

Now I know why I feel so embarrassed when I gulp answering a question from the co-worker I fear. I'm embarrassed to show that I'm embarrassed! Look at Flashbulb Eyes and Zygomatic Smile. Read 'em and weep.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Darwin Would Love It!

The Museum of Science in Boston has put up this great site to show an illustrated time line for Life's Evolution. Just drag the button across billions of years to see the various stages of living beings. Humans are an.... afterthought? transitory stage? culmination of evolutionary process? Stick around for another billion years to find out.

Monday, August 1, 2011

The Slap

Among the many stories my mother-in-law told me about her life as the oldest daughter of Slovak immigrants homesteading in a sod house in North Dakota in the early 1900s, was the one about how she found blood on her underwear one day when she was about thirteen. Mary was terrified that she was deathly ill and spent some time in great anxiety before deciding to tell her mother. Instead of reassuring her daughter that this was entirely normal and was the start of her menstrual periods, her mother slapped her! Apparently this was some sort of custom for Slovak women with their daughters, who usually arrived at this major event with no idea of what was happening.

Her next younger sister found out ahead of time what to expect from Mary or school friends. When it was her turn, she didn't say anything to her mother. When her mother found a bucket of rags soaking in her bedroom one day and asked what it was for, the younger sister said, "You know what it is." Period (pun intended!).

Kids weren't told anything about where babies came from, either. Mary said that being around farm animals let farm kids see how things were done with them, but often didn't make the connection with their parents or other people. She was 11 years old when she realized that her mother was showing signs of pregnancy, but it was never spoken of. On the night the youngest sister was born that year, she heard her parents talking in their bedroom (the only bedroom) while their 3 daughters slept on mattresses on the floor of the main room. Her mother asked the father, "What is it?" and her father answered, "Another girl." Then they talked about the small tear in the kitchen screen door - that the tear should be made bigger so that the girls could be told that the stork brought the baby. Mary listened to all this and said nothing to her parents about it the next day when the baby was produced for all to see.

Now I'm reading Miriam's Kitchen which has recipes and stories of Jewish life in America and in Eastern Europe. Imagine my surprise when I came to this page (205):

Puberty
In my grandmother's house in Brooklyn, in the bedroom in which I slept, there was a painted dresser. One drawer of the dresser held pale blue sanitary napkins, year after year.

These came in handy one year. Visiting, I got my first period - far from my mother, who had remained in Detroit to study for college exams.

I confided in my grandmother. She smacked my face.

I looked to her for a reason. I saw an ironic, apologetic little smile, heard a caught breath that might have been a decimal place's worth of secret amusement or inner regret.

She said: "Now you'll always have rosy cheeks," then went looking for a contraption, elastic and clips.

I knew this slap came out of the past, and she was just doing her duty. I sensed that her investment was less than complete. The smack was not painful, yet burned on my cheek like guilt, like innocence - something she felt was fitting, and I knew was unjust.

Later I stumbled on written words parsing that shtetl gesture. Thus mother warned daughter, time out of mind, not to compete for the father's attentions; thus mother taught daughter the shame of Eve. I may have been the last in my line to be punished in advance for sexual sins, mine and those of every mortal woman.
-----------------------------------------------
Mary was not Jewish, but Poland and Lithuania, where Miriam's people came from, were not far from Slovakia. I doubt her mother gave it any more thought than that it was what you did for your daughter, as it had been done to you. And Mary was the last in her line to be slapped.

Friday, July 22, 2011

and now for something completely different......

Came across this link to Savage Beauty, a surreal fashion/art exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here's the description:

This website from the Metropolitan Museum accompanies their retrospective exhibition of the work of couturier Alexander McQueen, who committed suicide at age 40 in 2010. McQueen was known for his lavishly staged runway shows, for example his spring 2003 collection, Irere, featured a recreation of a shipwreck complete with pirates and amazons, and models falling overboard.It's only a game in 2005, was a human chess game, with models dressed as chess pieces, such a knight in a horsehairs skirt. On the exhibition‚s website, visitors can view selected objects including McQueen's extremely low-slung trousers, "bumsters" or the Spine Corset, a silver exoskeleton, worn over a dress. Narration is provided by Andrew Bolton, the British curator of the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute, Michelle Olly, who wore one of the dresses, and McQueen himself. There is also a section of online videos available here, where visitors can watch a model in a chiffon dress drop into the ocean, and see the chess pieces move.

Click on the Video link to see a selection of short video clips of McQueen's shows. I really like the one called, "It's Only a Game," as described above. Wonder how this guy ever made any money? It's not like anyone can really wear these things. Can't think that he only sold to collectors and museums.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Crime and Punishment

Starting a week ago, I was assigned to a jury for a case at 26th & Cal, that ominous address for the Criminal Courts building on the south side of town right next to Cook County Jail. A convicted felon, who looked fairly ordinary to me, was accused of owning two guns kept in the bedroom closet of the apartment of his former girlfriend and their two grade school age children. Illinois law says that convicted felons can not have guns. The girlfriend was the only defense witness. She said they were no longer a couple and he only visited occasionally to see his children. She had assorted men's clothing hanging prominently in her closet and said that they were donations from friends and family for a garage sale - even though they had been there for a year since she moved there. He did go into the bedroom and lock the door for an hour or more once in awhile, which she thought was "odd."

I thought the girlfriend presented herself very well - dressed nicely, spoke intelligently, etc. Another woman on the jury, a suburban nurse, also totally bought the girlfriend's story, but several black women on the jury said they almost laughed out loud when they heard about the "garage sale." They said no woman would give up "prime real estate" in her bedroom closet to garage sale clothes - for a year! That stuff goes in plastic bags in the garage or basement! The more I listened to them, the more I realized I had been taken in. The last straw was the information that the felon's current address was with the "former" girlfriend's parents - hunh. Things just didn't add up.

So, at the same time that I felt foolish for having believed the girlfriend's story at first, I felt sad at having to find the felon guilty of two more felonies (after two days of the trial, the jury voted unanimously for a guilty verdict in less than 2 hours). Three felonies puts a person in the "habitual offender'' class in many states, although I don't know if this case falls under that law. I keep thinking about that guy and what it must be like to realize you will be in prison for a very very long time. One guy said as we were leaving the jury room to go home at the end that maybe we saved a life. One of the guns in the closet was loaded - probably to be used at a moment's notice - and sitting in a hatbox on the closet shelf. How many kids live in places like that?

I won't be able to stop thinking about all of this.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Blackened Zucchini a la Calabrese

Today I had 3 very nice organic zucchini in my fridge. I decided to make Blackened Zucchini the way my sister tells me her family likes them. Using Grandma's heirloom cast iron skillet, I let the zucchini and some chopped onion sizzle without disturbance while I made some spaghetti sauce out of my last two pints of canned tomatoes from last summer's garden (wiping knuckles on lapel of t-shirt and blowing on them). I figured this was blackened enough, but I'll have to hear from the source to know for sure. They were good! Not mushy like zucchini can get if cooked too long at low temp.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Conspiracy Theories at DePaul U.

Last night I was my husband's guest at a kickoff event for the alums of his old college who are working on an all-class reunion to be held next fall. He is a co-chair of the event and gave a nice introductory speech for the DePaul administrative somebody who headlined the event. I ended up mostly by myself during the preparations for the speeches, the speeches, and the subsequent post-speech college chitchat BUT I was sitting at a table where a handful of assorted alums wandered up with their glasses of wine and plates of munchables and ended up having one of the most interesting conversations I've had in many a moon.

Things got started when one man mentioned that he worked for the National Opinion Research Center at the U of Chicago which surveys citizens on many topics and reports the results to the U.S. government. On the other side of the table was a DePaul student about to graduate with a degree in International Relations. She talked about how her teachers had asked students to choose a country outside the U.S. to study the relationship of its media to the country's government and politics. I mentioned that I had just learned (from TED, see previous post) that popular search engines were filtering news to individuals based on past search history.

The guy from NORC then said that the surveys they do for the U.S. govt often end up in the news with unrecognizable conclusions after the govt "massages" the survey results. The American student has family in Paris and has gone there often in recent years for visits. She began saying that when you get outside the U.S. and hear news from another viewpoint, it is quite amazing to notice the difference. The NORC guy claimed that if Americans knew only a fraction of what he's heard, we'd all freak out. One item he talked about was about the weakness of the American dollar - how other countries did not want to accept it anymore - wanted gold instead. But the U.S. doesn't have much gold. He predicted doom ahead for the U.S., so I asked him if he was buying up gold coins (like my dad). He said it wouldn't help since the govt would be confiscating such coins if we went to a gold standard (!). He also asked the student how many were like her in that she was questioning government pronouncements. He said he has two daughters who are also college students and, from what he could observe, students are no longer revolutionaries.

The student said we should look at France24 and the NORC guy said to try RT.com (see the disputed Wikipedia article, too) in order to see a non-American viewpoint. As other people began leaving, the conversation wound down to most people saying they didn't believe anything anymore: bin Laden wasn't dead, etc. Next we'll all be like the old guy I saw last weekend on Michigan Avenue with a megaphone and a sandwich board saying that the recent tsunamis were the result of underground detonation of nuclear bombs - with Japan the latest victim. Whew.

Monday, June 6, 2011

TED comes through again: MUST SEE!

I really wish I had seen this last February when TED posted it. This is really frightening for the world. I wonder if BBC News is safe? NPR? PBS?

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

National Jukebox

The Library of Congress website has a section called the National Jukebox which has a wonderful historical recordings collection. I could spend a lot of time going through their playlist, but here are some gems:

The Farmer and the Business Man, a speech by Teddy Roosevelt in 1912! He sounds kinda funny to me.


Bluin' the Blues, played by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1918.


See if you can find the ones with "objectionable content." I couldn't!

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Become a Royal in Time for THE Wedding!


Even if you're aren't getting up at 5 am to watch Kate and William jump over the broom, you can get yourself a royal title and a posh name to go with it at the Royal Name Generator. Have a go!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Book Affairs


Every once in awhile, I fall in love with a book. I might not know this is going to happen at first, but a few pages in I realize I'm head over heels. Most of the time, my book crush has a sudden death somewhere in a middle chapter that just doesn't live up to the start. But when I find true book love, I'm in heaven!

That just happened with Eleanor Rigby, one of the books I'm reading right now. I can't wait to read more about Liz Dunn, a dumpy, lonely woman with a wicked sense of humor, and her long-lost son, whom she gave up for adoption after an ill-fated trip to Rome as as a high school junior. Jeremy, who is now 20, is a lovable goof with MS and a winning way of selling "sleep systems" from his wheelchair. My heart just yearns for these two.

This story is just crazy, funny, and sad. Coupland's fans may say that it's not one of his best, but since I haven't read any of the others, I don't have to agree. I just love this one!

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Sidewalks Forever!


Do you believe in sidewalks? 99% of my neighborhood has them, but after reading this news from another suburb in the area, I'm wondering whether kids in the future will have to do without them.

Sidewalks are part of so many of my childhood memories. Playing jacks required knowing who had the smoothest concrete that wouldn't tear up the side of your hand when you swooped up the jacks. Hopscotch was best out at the edge of town where trees were still sticks and sidewalks weren't buckled by big tree roots. Little kids had to ride their tricycles only on the sidewalk. Sidewalks were the boundaries for toddlers whose bored big sisters had to make sure they didn't get too near the street. Sidewalks were where you got down on your hands and knees to watch ant wars.

Town kids need sidewalks!

Thursday, February 24, 2011

The Penny-Pinching Gene


Today, the miser went shopping at Whole Foods. Some veggie frozen-food entrees were advertised as "2/$8 - Reg. price = $4.99. Save 99c each!" When I saw that the shelf label marked the stuff at $4.49 each, I realized my chance to make some money off their mistake. So, I dutifully went to the Customer Service desk, explained the situation, and asked if they were going to honor their sale sign and give me 2 of them for the real 99c savings for a total of $7. I was told to take the items to the checkout lane and I would be credited for the new savings amount. Nice.

After heading for the parking lot, I decided to check my receipt and saw that it looked like I had been charged $3.49 for one item, and $3.99 for the other. I went back to the CS desk to complain. That's when the tables were turned and the clerk showed me that I was only charged once for 1 item at $3.49 - the other was for a carton of eggs that I misread. Well then I had to offer to pay for the missing frozen item to be honest myself, but the clerk just waved me away. Even nicer!

Both my mother and my late mother-in-law pretty much knew to the penny how much they should pay for anything and where they could get the best prices for things. They would be proud!

I even toyed with the idea of becoming a "super-couponer" - the people that study store ads and websites, hoard coupons, and know how to make stores practically pay them to buy stuff. I watched the Jill Cataldo DVD on the topic, but decided to do without the thrill of warehousing cereal and toothpaste in my basement to get them for peanuts. Instead, I save my Sunday paper coupon booklets and give them to another woman at work who has succumbed to the frenzy.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

1st Memorial Birthday

My mother-in-law would have celebrated her 111th birthday last Thursday and she remains prominent in our family consciousness. Today we'll have a dinner to remember her, using her good dishes and silver, with turkey (she roasted dozens in her lifetime) and pie (her favorite dessert).

She often told me that back around 1910-1915, when she helped her mother and the other North Dakota homesteading women to serve 2 immense meals each day for the men harvesting the crops on all the farms in the area, pies were the favored end to each feast. There, they used apples, rhubarb, and chokecherries. Still love rhubarb pie myself, but today it will be cherry and pecan. Here's to you, Mom!

Monday, January 31, 2011

This Can't Be Origami!


PBS has a fascinating program, Between the Folds, that highlights the work of the recently deceased French artist, Eric Joisel, among others. I've never seen anything like these "sculptures" made with just one piece of paper that is never cut or glued. Read the notes on the Joisel's Saxophonist - amazing! And he speaks English very well, so you can hear him talk about being a "folder." Somehow, "folder" doesn't seem to do justice to his art.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Microwave Epiphanies


Not Your Mother's Microwave Cookbook has turned out to be a gem for me. Here are some of the ideas I hadn't heard before:
  • Toast nuts on a paper plate or doubled paper towels on HIGH for about 2 and a half minutes per 1/2 cup of nuts, stirring every 45 seconds.
  • Toast 1 cup of coconut, sweetened or not, on a paper plate or glass pie plate on HIGH for 2-3 minutes, stirring every minute.
  • Peel up to 6 fresh tomatoes in a ring on a double layer of paper towels by cooking on HIGH for 15 seconds, let stand for 10-15 minutes, then peel. Love this one!
  • Peel up to 4 fresh peaches with 1/2 cup hot water in a 2-quart microwaveable bowl, covered with a lid or plastic wrap with a few holes in it. Cook on HIGH for 60-90 seconds, let stand for 5-10 minutes, drain and peel.
  • Ripen an avocado or banana (for cooking only) by placing on a paper towel and pricking the skin once or twice. Cook on DEFROST for 2 minutes, turn over and cook on DEFROST for 30-60 seconds more.
  • Peel up to 4 green chiles or 2 bell peppers by rubbing all over lightly with oil, placing them on a microwave plate and piercing a few places on each side. Cover with wax paper and cook on HIGH: 3 minutes for chiles; 2 minutes for peppers. Turn over and cook on HIGH for 1-2 minutes more. Wrap in damp kitchen towel for 10 minutes and rub off the skins.
What else is there about microwaves that I don't know? Let's hear.