I had no idea there was lightning

This is a must see - photographs of the volcano erupting in Iceland. Lightning in the eruptions. I had no idea.

From the depths of the Earth to Outer Space

I admit I watch the TV shopping networks when they're showing jewelry. Stone jewelry. Precious, semi-precious - I am amazed at the colors of rocks that come out of the earth. But tonight I had to laugh when the presenter was trying to figure out how much three payments on $90 would be - she was like "I know we have someone here who can just figure that out..."

That woman makes a lot more than I do, and she gets to wear lots of pretty jewelry. Just saying.

Another funny thing today. I was reading an op-ed in the New York Times from Iceland. It's worth reading, but my favorite part was a description of a couple of the jokes that are making the rounds there, since the bursting bubble of Iceland's economy has caused problems in Europe, and now their erupting volcano has thrown air traffic in Europe off for the better part of a week. My favorite line?

"It was the last wish of the Icelandic economy that its ashes be spread over Europe."

Yeah, I had to laugh at that one out loud.

So here is today's song. Why? I don't know. Something about "And all the science, I don't understand. It's just my job five days a week..." And I was thinking about how you just don't get popular songs about outer space any more. Are we so used to it, those of us who were born after the start of the space age? We interact with space every day, sending information bouncing around from satellite to satellite and back again, and looking at the cool colorized pictures that the Hubble telescope shoots back to us. But who dreams of going into space? Why don't we long for it and sing about it? Have we given that dream up to the robots? I don't know. Anyway. Here is the song.

Elton John - Rocket Man

Tonight's Song - April 18

I am awake. Terribly so. I am tired enough that I should be asleep, but I have been awake since about 2:30 this morning, and I only slept fitfully before that. I think I am nervous because I have to speak in Sacrament Meeting today. I am not looking forward to it, and I don't feel like I have had time to flesh out my ideas - it has been a crazy week, so much so that I didn't even wake up Thursday morning until my first class had been in session for about 40 minutes. So I don't feel so put together these days, and speaking in church is only worsening the sentiment.

Why is it that when you feel like this you always run into something about how you're not just judged by whether you do something, you are also judged on your heart and WHY you are doing it? I wonder if my heart will ever be right.

Anyway, so I am awake. I read for a while, but I spent most of yesterday reading, so that didn't last long. Then I re-read a lesson I'm giving today (the teacher development course), and I finally decided to look for some music to listen to. And I decided to listen to The Temper Trap. They are awesome. And they have tonight's song.

The Temper Trap - Soldier On

Today's Song - April 12

Found this one while figuring out who won the Sanremo Music Festival this year, as I'll be doing a reading on the festival with my 3rd year student this week. This guy won the best young artist award. I liked this song better than the winner of the overall prize, so this is the one we'll do a fill-in-the-blank exercise with. Oh, isn't it fun to make everything scholastic. :P

CHEEZY ol' video, though. Overly sentimental even by Italian standards, I would think.

Tony Maiello - Il linguaggio della resa (The language of surrender)

Today's Song - April 10

Paul McCartney - Distractions

Today's Song, or Maybe Yesterday's?

I woke up with this one in my head. Does that mean it is mad at me for not posting it yesterday, or is it really today's song? I don't know. We'll have to see if another song comes along and takes over for today.

On an unrelated note, yesterday I did some cooking with coriander and fenugreek, and a little star anise and cinnamon, and today the house smells like bacon and maple syrup. Urgh. So I'm thinking I need to cook something with rosemary to drive that smell out. The smell of bacon should smell good to me, I know, but after working in the beef jerky factory years and years and years ago, it's just one of those smells that doesn't go away fast enough - especially when it's like today, smelling like bacon without ever really having been bacon.

Anyway. Here is today's song, or maybe yesterday's.

The Rosebuds - Silja Line

Today's Song - April 7

Just because some days it's just Tom Petty.

Runnin' Down a Dream

Today's Song - April 6

Broken Bells - The Ghost Inside

Ok, so this is the live playing from Jimmy Fallon. Amilynne actually called me up a few weeks ago to tell me to download this, and I had done so a couple of days before. She likes it because of the "clap clap" percussion. I love the horn. Anyway, it's awesome.

4/18 update: the Jimmy Fallon performance was removed from YouTube, so here's the studio version.

Today's Song - April 5

Shearwater - On the Death of the Waters

There is something about the first song on an album that I love. So often, it is one of my very favorite tracks, more than just as an introduction. For this song, it is the screaming middle after the quiet intro - it was not this song that attracted me to the band, (maybe that one will be the song of the day on another day) but it is one of the songs I keep going back to. Agony and a reflection of the pain in life.

Cleaning Up the Blog

So I've made a couple of changes to the blog, upgrading to the new format, getting rid of old links that didn't work, changing the name to something that says a lot more about me. (For the history books, it used to be "Don't Feed the Bears" - which also said something about me, but a lot less than the current title.) Who knows. Maybe I'll go back, but there doesn't seem to be a reason to.

That and I'm trying to figure out a new picture to replace the one in my profile of me at a very young age. I love that picture, but certainly something more current and memorable has been captured in the last 15 years.

Or maybe not.

Anyway, it's spring break, which is just lovely. I slept in this morning, and read in bed later still. I am reading ...And Ladies of the Club, and I've been reading it since last summer. Once upon a time I would stop everything in my life to read a book, now it has to fit into everything else. I was never going to be that kind of an adult. Anyway, back on topic, I read the book the summer I turned 21, right before going on my mission. It was the last great read before novels became a no-no for a while. Fantastic book. It chronicles the "Waynesboro Women's Club" and its members in a small Ohio town from the end of the Civil War well into the 20th century. Anyway, this morning one of the main characters died, and so I put the book down and did some work, because I'm not ready to go on yet. And I'm only 2/3 of the way through the book (it's just under 1500 pages). So maybe I'll finish it in under a year.

After this, I have some serious reading to do. This weekend I started going through Jacques Barzun's series of lectures from 1973, The Use and Abuse of Art. I wonder how much I understood when I first read it as an undergrad, and I wonder if I understand more or less now. I like to think that my mental capacities are now broader than they were. But I wonder.

Here is what I need, though. In the intro to his lectures, Barzun states that he assumes his essays' title will bring to his listeners' minds the title of some work by Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History. So what I need is for the libraries of the world to be completely interconnected so that I can click on that title, read a brief synopsis, decide whether to read the whole thing, and then get right back into Barzun. Why are we not there yet? The iPad was released this week, and one would hope that we are getting closer, but one fears that the publishers will never let us get so interlinked with anything they are hoping to still profit from. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the world's knowledge were linked together like the synapses of an all-encompassing brain? Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to download understanding? But of course, it would take all of the work and effort out of it, and it would be absolutely defenseless against point-of-view and brainwashing...

But my undergrad years were wasted on me when I was young. Young, like in the profile picture. Does that person look like she gets it? Probably not. But oh, what a life ahead for her.

No news

So I have nothing much to write about, but here I am and I would rather blog than get ready for the next week. In my defense, it's one heck of a week coming up - Foreign Language Week - including our Foreign Language Film Festival after school (in reality, it's been going on for a week already, but we show the Italian movie Wednesday), decoration and banner making in class this week, the Foreign Language Honor Society inductions and banquet Thursday night, and cooking with my Italian classes Thursday and Friday. So I have spent much of this weekend trying to figure out just what I want to do - which film I want to show (I've settled on The Icicle Thief), what I want to cook (NO IDEA), etc, etc.

I really do need to figure out tonight what I will cook with them so I can put together a grocery list for tomorrow evening. Last year we made crostata. I don't remember what we made in the year before; I think we focused on how to make a good red sauce; and two years before that we made risotti - cheese in most of the classes, and a seafood one in classes with older (and more daring) students. We made chocolate salami before that, and before that gnocchi, and spaghetti alla carbonara, and one year we made fresh pasta, which I would like to do again, but it makes a colossal mess and I know I wouldn't have 6th period cleaned up before the freshman orientation class came in 8th period. Because of that, it might just be chocolate salami time again - it's quick, easy, and fairly low-mess. But I did something sweet last year, so I haven't decided for sure. I'm also considering pasta with tuna sauce, because it's one of my favorites, quick and easy, and something very different from what any of them would consider. I could maybe do one batch tuna and another onion so the fish haters would still have something to nosh on.

Anyway, plenty on the docket for this week, and I have a feeling I'll have plenty to recuperate from when spring break hits.

Back from Houston...

... and my brain is buzzing. There is so much to do. I have barely unpacked and I sat down at the bookcase to yank out any and all books having to do with philosophy, criticism, or thought of whatever kind. I've got to put these next in my reading list. There is so much to learn and to consider, and so little time.

So why all this? Because next year I should be teaching one level of Theories of Knowledge for IB. Which is such a huge mental exercise! But hopefully it will give me some interesting ideas to work out here, so maybe it will be a cause for more blogging.

Anyway, so here is the injunction I found scrawled on a tablet in the bookcase. I don't know the source, all I have written is that it is from Sanskrit 4500 years ago:

"Look well to the one day for it and it alone is life. In the brief course of this one day lie all the verities and realities of your existence. The pride of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty. Yesterday is only a dream and tomorrow is but a vision. Yet each day well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and each tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this one day, for it and it alone is life."

Stone carving at Rice University, Houston

Farinata genovese

So in Genova there is a flatbread called farinata. It is quite different from other breads in that it is made of chick peas rather than flour. Strangely, to me it tastes kind of eggy, even though there are no eggs in it. Amilynne called me and was wondering about it because since it is made of legumes it is probably better for you than most breads. So I pulled out my recipe, we had a few laughs and a good language lesson translating it, and the farinata just came out of the oven.

Here's the recipe:

250g (about 2 cups) chick pea flour

3/4 of a liter of water

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 c. olive oil

First, soak the flour in the water for 4 hours. Then strain it. This was the surprising part - I ended up using my yogurt strainer and it took 28 hours to strain it all. I imagine that the needed time using cheesecloth would vary depending on how much surface area your strainer had. Anyway, once it's strained, stir in the oil really well - and it does take some stirring to suspend all that oil in the flour paste. It ends up the consistency of pancake batter. Then you're supposed to pour it on an oiled cooking sheet - I poured it into a giant nonstick oven-safe skillet instead, as it seemed that the oil content was probably already high enough. Bake until golden.

It turned out pretty good - a little less oily than the original, but still tasty. Buon appetito!

Epistemology, Subjunctive Mood, and Pizza

I love teaching Italian. Love it absolutely unabashedly smashingly 100%. Especially during the summer at the university. When the students have to look at it every day, it is an avalanche of information, but we're so absorbed in it that it gets in our bones.

I also love it because it's Italian. Have you ever heard a more beautiful, expressive language? Really? Right. I thought not. Sometimes just the sounds of Italian can be enough to choke me up and put tears smarting in my eyes. Some poetry is so mellifluous it could bring the world to its end. I was talking with an Italian friend once and I asked her if Italians realize just how beautiful their language is. "Ma certo," - of course - she said, out of hand.

And today was extraordinary. First off, you have to know that I have just the best little class right now. They are all working very hard and have their footing better than I did when I took Italian 102. Italian 102 made me cry. I have never felt more stupid than I did taking Italian 102, which is saying a lot. Let's just say that I am not the person from my Italian 102 class who was voted Most Likely to Be an Italian Teacher. I probably came in last for that, and my professor would probably die of shock if she found out. Anyway. I have a great class of students who are working hard.

So today started normally for a quiz day: vocabulary review, grammatical review, quiz. And a five minute break after the last person finishes their quiz. Well, the five minute break ended and two of the students were still gone, so I waited an extra minute but then we just went ahead and got started going over last night's homework. We hadn't gotten too far when one of the missing students poked her head in. She made a funny wincey face and then asked (in Italian), "Can we eat in here?" I consented. Both girls came in with slices of pepperoni pizza. And they're like, "Do you want some pizza? There's free pizza down in the quad." So the students in the class were all "Let us go get pizza!" I looked at the clock, and they were like "We'll stay late! Let us go get pizza! Come on! You want some too!"

And they were right. I love pizza. It may be the perfect food, along with gelato, pork chops, and chocolate. But I don't do pizza often because, let's face it, I don't need to be eating a whole pizza myself. Well, it has been such a good class. So I gave in. The two with the pizza stayed in the classroom, and the rest of us went down. It took about 7 minutes, and we talked Italian while we were in line. I did start to second guess myself that we should have done it after class, but when our last class member got the next-to-last slice, my misgivings went away. We went back up to the classroom. (The teacher for the next class was outside the classroom. She gave me a funny look as we walked past her, into the room, with pizza. Oh well.)

And this is where the class became brilliant. Because you see, language is always better if you are talking about real things, and there we were, biting into hot yummy slices of pizza, a perfect circumstance of real life having brought us to that point: some friends told some other friends about something that they had experienced.

And today's topic was the subjunctive. And here is how the lesson went.

Two students came in and said "There's free pizza in the quad." To them, the statement was absolute true fact. They had been there. They had stood in line and listened to the band performing there. They had received the pizza, and nibbled on it already. Everything about what they said was real.

For the rest of us, though, it wasn't real yet. The situation for us was different. We had to believe or not believe about the pizza. Our situation was this: "We think that there's free pizza in the quad." For all we knew, they were playing a joke on us, or the pizza would be gone before we got there, so in our case, "there's free pizza" was something that lacked complete certainty. And that would be expressed in the subjunctive.

Hooray! and perfect.

No Fly Zone

So it's July and as I am looking back over the past month, one thing is striking: I didn't fly anywhere in the month of June. Can I tell you how nice that is? I mean, I love to go to different places, but it's starting to get to the point where I wonder if having to go by plane doesn't just ruin the whole thing. In the past 6 months, I have flown round trip across the country three times, and on each trip I got stuck somewhere overnight on the outbound or on the return trip. That means that 50% of the time, they just haven't been able to get me to where I was going that day. I give the situation an F. And I'm glad to have stayed on the ground in June.

GAM

I woke up this morning dreaming of Torino. I don't know if I've ever dreamed of Torino before (besides possibly when I lived there). Always when I came back it was Genova Genova Genova in my dreams, but if I had limitless possibilities I would board a plane for Torino immediately. It is a beautiful city. I dreamed about taking my sister there and going to the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea- GAM - a wonderful museum with much of its catalogue online. Of course, and this is typical, my favorite painting is not shown. It is IMMENSE, and it must be of St. Teresa, because it is of a levitating nun and other nuns are trying to hold her down, and there is a mother superior type nun who looks like she disapproves, although she might just be afraid. And it is (or was, in 1996) outside the galleries on the 19th century floor.

It would also be a lot of fun to go to Parco Valentino again and this time to buy the awesome catapult for sale in the weaponry replicas store. There was a guillotine there that was pretty cool too, but I've always been loyal to the catapult. And to cross the Po and see the Gran Madre, a beautiful domed church shown below (painting by Enrico Reycend, from GAM). And there were some twin churches that were cool, and a goldsmith, who was awesome, and I could really just go on and on. Anyway. Torino is just a really fantastic city, and if I were headed to Italy today, I would definitely swing by.

Captain Kirk and Filthy Wilma

So last weekend was my trek out to my mother's wedding. My scheduled arrival had me missing the big dinner the night before the event. My actual arrival was even later and included a night in the Phoenix airport. A night made much more pleasant by the generosity of a woman who cleans airplanes for Southwest at night who brought me a blanket to use, which she led me to believe was from one of the planes, but which I actually found out was her own personal blanket - the airline agent to whom I tried to return it the next morning said it wasn't one of theirs. Anyway. So when I arrived (finally!) for the wedding, one of the first pieces of news gleaned from my brother and my sister was that there was a pan of Filthy Wilma in the fridge, left over from the previous night's festivities. What is Filthy Wilma? Well, as Amilynne puts it, if you're a good Mormon, it's Republican Dessert, and if you're a bad Mormon, it's Filthy Wilma. And it's a crust topped with a cream cheese layer and a chocolate pudding layer, with various amounts of Cool Whip throughout, and it's mighty tasty.

Well, we attended the wedding, and the next day made a trek to Virginia City, which was a lot of fun. We played the Virginia City Game: on the way up the mountain to Virginia City, make a list of all of the people you want to see there. (We deviated and added a couple of things to our list, too.) Once in Virginia City, call these people/items as you see them, and when you go home, the person with the most points wins. My brother won, hands down. Let's just say that his ability to spot handlebar moustaches and mutton chops is the stuff of legend.

Also in Virginia City, we bought fudge at Grandma's Fudge Factory. Wow. You knew it would be good because you can watch them fluff up the hot fudge from the store window. It was seriously the best fudge I've ever bought. The guy working there was very funny. There was harmonica music playing, and it felt sad to him - he remarked on the irony of sad music in a candy store, and it was just funny. Anyway. We also went to the cemetery and to a shooting gallery, 45 shots for $2, which was an awesome fun time. Amilynne had made lunches for us to eat, but once we got back to the car, we decided to forego the sandwiches and go early to eat Basque food, then go see the Star Trek movie, which none of us had had a chance to see yet.

At the cemetery

So just how did Captain Kirk meet Filthy Wilma? Somewhere along the ride home, Amilynne let it slip that in Reno, you can bring your own food to the movie theater. She said that she had seen people bring in pizzas and fast food bags before. So of course, much to her chagrin, that night we walked into the theater toting a shiny silver 9x13 cake pan half full of Filthy Wilma. Popcorn will never be the same.

I thought the movie was awesome, by the way. 5 stars.

Filthy Wilma

Grandma's Fudge Factory -- yeah, it costs less when you actually go there.

A few words

So my absence here can be traced to one cause and one cause only: in January, I had the cable company come to take the analog box off of my cable for the new "digital transition" and all, and when the box went away, I got like 30 more channels.  So I have been watching TV for the past five months.   Just so you know.

I've also had an incredible number of migraine headaches.  Go figure.

Today I was flipping channels and saw Prague.  Which of course meant I had to stop and watch.  The movie was xXx, staring the city of Prague and Vin Diesel.  And I watched it all.  You know the building the Americans take over as their little weapons armory?  Yeah.  That's my favorite building in Prague, except that instead of a weapons armory inside, there's a little bar where Amilynne kindly got coffee so I could sit and soak the building in.  So of course the movie prompted a phone call to Amilynne, which led to her getting out her travel journal from last summer and basically reading the whole thing, punctuated with exclamations from both of us and little details added from my journal.  So I have just relived the trek from Prague to Rome.  I can't even begin to express how I wish it were summer and I had a ticket for Europe!  

It's not summer.  I have a stack of work to grade that will only grow this week, so I ought to get to it.  And maybe do some lesson planning too, and some prep work on final exams and all.  And since the season for good television is waning, maybe I'll write more here too in the coming days.

For pure enjoyment

Yeah.  I am loving this one.

Pancetta is a gift from the gods.

So tonight I made a wonderful concoction: a couple of slices of pancetta cubed and fried up with garlic, add water, a chipotle cube, green lentils, and split mung beans.  Cook.  When they're about ready, throw in some spinach, and top with European style yogurt (runny, no pectin, super tangy).  Chompy winter's gruel.