Holding on to my dear

 

I’ve been bullet journaling for three years. I didn’t do so well these last few months, but it still matters enough to get out the journal and think about decorating it. I like cutting up fancy papers and getting out my stamps maybe more than I like journaling. I left the cover bare my first year, but then found great joy in recycling my Mary Engelbreit desk calendars as cover art. The first year I decorated I was focused on writing. The next year was on reading. This year I will just hold on to my DEAR, and be thankful I have someone to love. 

Claire Saffitz: Expert.

 

When I was thinking about You Tube cooking channels I watch I realized I was fairly light on women. After thousands of years of oppression I feel women should be given every leg up they can get, so I started reviewing the channels with women. It turns out I watch a lot of women, but usually on the standard channels, Food Network and such. You Tube rewards the aggressive personality and that’s usually men.

Hunting through the You Tube channels I remembered Claire Saffitz. When I am working out a new bread or dessert recipe I gather expert advice, and Claire has always been on the list of experts I consult. She slipped my mind because she is so obviously adept. She had made it to the magic circle of Martha, Ina, and America’s Test Kitchen complete. 

Claire knows her stuff. She is also prone to small mistakes that make good television. I don’t worry when trying her recipes, and I enjoy watching her make things I’d never attempt. She is as sciency as ATK and real as Martha and Ina. She is particularly focused on breads and desserts. My family runs on these categories during the holidays and all new recipes are welcome. Claire is fun to watch and truly educational. What more could you ask for? Go and see for yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/c/ClaireSaffitzxDessertPerson

Planning for Christmas

I had a perfectly lovely family Christmas this year. My father has been working for more than a decade on collecting and repairing antique toy trains for his children and grandchildren along with all the buildings and accessories to make Christmas villages for them to run around in. This was the year he gifted all these things to us. We had such a lovely time setting them up and going through things. We will never forget this Christmas.

We ate our favorite Christmas foods and opened other presents. We read the Christmas story. We prayed Christmas prayers. But I missed Jesus. My kids surprised me this year by decorating the house while I was out shopping. It is beautiful, and sentimental. I love it, but not one of the three creches I own is on display.

I am the only Catholic who goes to mass in our family. I didn’t make it to either mass, and I regret it. I feel like I missed my opportunity to plug into the deeper issues and gifts of Christmas. I won’t let that happen next year. It might take every moment between now and then to get to a more spiritual Christmas, but it matters to me. I will get it done.

Sweet and Toothsome

 

A Jewish Christmas of movies and Chinese food has always seemed like a lovely way to spend the day. Movies have always been important to me even when Christian fundamentalism meant they had to be waited for, sometimes waited years for, on TV. I will be enjoying a very Christian Christmas, but if I was going Jewish I’d watch Wonka. 

It has been a while since I enjoyed a musical comedy movie the way I enjoyed Wonka. A prequel to the the beloved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movies it takes us through Willy Wonka’s backstory. The story is charming though not compelling. The characters are nicely drawn and beautifully acted. The sets are glorious, rich with color but not garish. The music is endearing and leaves you humming particularly Scrub Scrub and A Place of Our Own. 

Don’t miss it. Its quiet magic lingers on after you’ve seen it. 

Maybe it’s because I’m a woman

 When I think of the holy journey to Bethlehem, I think of Mary and the actual waiting for the “deliverance” every pregnant woman knows is coming. I ponder her being away from her family and friends and the village woman who had delivered her when she was born. It is a formidable experience that doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

Today I kept singing part of a song to myself, one of those ear worm kind of things. Eventually I found it on Google, a song we sing on Maundy Thursday, and I think it is a good thing to think about about his birth and the labor of his mother.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCr2tn4yYKY

JoAnne Salmon: Swimming Along in Watercolors

 

As a preschooler I was quite delighted to find out that Mrs Wetzel would be coming over to babysit me one day after church. Mrs. Wetzel was a first grade teacher who always had interesting things to do. When she arrived she asked if I could keep a secret, and went back to her car to get a large canvas and other painting supplies. She didn’t expect to get very far with a preschooler on her hands, but I was mesmerized watching the barn and field coming to life. She had it nearly finished by the time my parents came back. She presented them with the painting as a present. I was proud of my contribution of sitting on the bench quietly.

Painting still has the power to hold my attention, and lately it’s been JoAnne Salmon who’s been wielding the brush. Her scenes are charming, and I like the colors she uses. The little animations at the end make you smile. I believe she worked on a children’s show, and I want to find out more about it. 

JoAnne’s channel is young, so you can easily get in on the ground floor. Be careful though. I blew through most of the existing episodes in a few days. There is something restful to the mind about Jo’s work. I may go back and rewatch them all.

https://www.youtube.com/@joannesalmon

Little Things

 

As a child I was often admonished to be less sensitive, to know how to take a joke, but I was blond, Polish and raised in Appalachia. It felt like everyone had a joke in their pocket for me. Dad said I needed to toughen up most people were only trying to make conversation. I took the advice and began a collection of jokes for my pocket. You can imagine how well that went over from a seven year old. There was no winning with those old jokes that got their graft from the pretended impersonal.

I’m glad they’re mostly gone. I can think of so many better conversations to have.

I Owe It All To Martha

 Every year I choose something to bake for my neighbors. I’m a little reserved and this small gift is meant to testify that I’m not a complete hermit. I enjoy this sort of thing very much, and I try to imagine receiving something yummy. This led to a down-sizing of my gifts because most of my neighbors are empty-nesters and don’t have enough mouths to eat a dozen cookies or a pie. 

This year it’s biscotti. The choice was a bit risky, but a few crunchy cookies to dip in your morning coffee seemed like a good choice and a good size. I had never made biscotti, but I watch enough baking shows that it seemed very doable. Just to make sure I would be successful I hunted up three Martha Stewart recipes. Martha’s recipes strike a balance between simple and worth-doing. The three recipes all recommended different procedures, and I followed each one to the letter, learning a lot in the process. The biggest revelation I hadn’t seen in the baking shows was that biscotti dough is sticky. Getting it out onto the well-floured countertop required lots of implements and patience, but boy was it worth it.

Biscotti do this magic trick of turning from a break-your-teeth-brick into a delicious cookie with the briefest of dunks in your tea or coffee. Homemade are better than store-bought. This is a trick I will pull out of my sleeve often. Thank you, Martha, for this and all the other things.

Pecan Cranberry Biscotti

https://www.marthastewart.com/336133/pecan-cranberry-biscotti

Cherry Almond Biscotti

https://www.marthastewart.com/316102/cherry-almond-biscotti

Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti

https://www.marthastewart.com/1129608/chocolate-hazelnut-biscotti

Wouldn’t Eye.

 

Sea it.

The beauty of everyone.

Stop fearing the bus.

Stop feeding it victims.

Let people love you.

The strange you.

The broken you.

The ugly you.

Or burn in shame, 

taking others along for the ride.

Frieda Vizel: A Guiding Light

 I love meeting new people and exploring new cultures. I try to have something good to offer, and to appreciate whatever I’m given. Having a guide can be truly helpful, especially one that understands with love the culture they are presenting. 

Frieda Vizel is such a guide to Hasidic Judaism in New York. Born into the community she found herself on the outside due to some bad luck in marriage and a questing mind. She now leads tours in the area explaining Hasidic customs and life. For those of us unable to travel to New York she brings the community to us with insightful videos, interviews and, of course, tours. She is smart and thoughtful, while tender and kind. She speaks her truth with love.

https://www.youtube.com/@FriedaVizelBrooklyn

Polished

 

It is December 5th and I’ve finished my holiday box of chocolate covered Oreos. They are supposed to be a special treat that I sneak one-at-a-time as I do all the work that makes Christmas. I used to have enough discipline to share one or two without regret, but one child is in the hospital, others are struggling, and my oldest let us know that she can’t come for Christmas this year. 

The empty box is something to pay attention to, but I don’t regret it. Sometimes it is better to have an Oreo than nothing. Sometimes the empty box can comfort you by reminding you there are better ways of being, and that you miss them. Some day I’ll put both feet on the ground, and I won’t budge, not even for Christmas.

The Perils of Cross-Cultural Communication

 

I’ve been looking to find a good, medieval, Asian text for Crowhook since Orphan Zhao tanked. I found Li Po and Tu Fu listed in the back of one of my other books and decided to give it a go. There is a lengthy introduction (around 100 pages), but it is well-written and interesting. The actual poetry itself is short, but the translator has taken the time to unpack all the references and images for the non-Asian reader. The notes are long, up to six pages and sometimes have their own sub notes. 

At first all of this put me off. I felt that there was enough common human content that all the extras were bogging things down, but then all that extra content got sticky and I wanted to figure it out. I realized that here was a beautiful opportunity for my students to think about and work through through the difficulties of inter-cultural communication. All the texts I use in the medieval period are translations. These two poets are especially difficult because they are Chinese and the shapes of the words plays an important part in the beauty of the poetry. We as non-Chinese readers can’t see these important cues. We need six pages of notes in order to get a glimpse. Add to the fact that these poems were written in the late seven hundreds, and we are lucky to get it at all. 

These poems are profoundly human in a Chinese way that deserves attention even though it isn’t easy.