“It wasn’t just that his folks were vegetarians, they also discriminated among vegetables, excluding from their diet everything red, for example, the color of anger. Most bread, having been made by killing yeasts, was taboo.”
– Thomas Pynchon, Vineland
Okay, this, as well as the iceberg-lettuce-and-white-rice vegetarianism I saw at college, is just crazy. However, if you cook like Sydney cooks, vegetarianism is a whole different, er, animal.
Erin
After a long spell of single-digit weather and impressive snowfall, it suddenly turned 45 degrees today – and sunny! Everyone on campus agreed that it felt positively balmy. But it seems we should keep the boots on: that snow is starting to melt in the sunshine, and the lakes have begun to form . . .
Erin
I’m taking a class that’s all about E. M. Forster (British 20th-century fiction writer). Forster is particularly good at mocking British tourists who tour the Continent for “education,” “culture,” “to see the art,” “adventure,” “in hopes of romance with a native,” etc. During his time this was a huge industry, particularly with wealthy young women. When Forster himself went, he was accompanied by his mother (not much chance of him running off to Paris for sin and decadence). Knowing this about his history, it’s not particularly surprising that in a draft of one of his books he has his heroine note:
“It was for this she had given up her home, made elaborate preparations, crossed the channel in a gale, had endless railway journeys and four customs examinations–that she might sit with a party of English ladies who seemed even duller than ladies in England.”
Erin
I think my camera is older than I am, i.e., it’s emphatically not digital-age. That, combined with the fact that I no longer take large numbers of photos, ensures a pretty significant lag between taking photos and there being any possibility of posting them. All that to say, some time in the summer when we’re all wishing for some relief from the heat might be a good time to post pictures of frozen waterfalls and such.
Meanwhile, here are two more photos of our home.
This would be half of our bedroom. Arwyn, naturally, knows a comfortable spot when she sees one.
Remember the pictures I posted a while back of our bookshelves? This is the same room, but looking the other direction. This is where we work, where we enjoy the lovely views over the valley, and where we eat. And where we put one lone bookcase that didn’t fit with the rest of them.
Also, notice that Erin has stuff lying all over her side of the table (the fore side). It looks like she even needed a chair to contain the overflow. I, on the other hand, managed to organize my papers into lovely stacks that serve as a nice balance to the monitor on the other side of the table. Aesthetic balance is important in one’s work area.
Sydney
Sydney and I took the morning easy. After my recent bouts of up-early-and-grading-frantically, it felt great to try a different pace. Then we drove out to see the iced-over waterfall near where we live. The entire valley was filled with snow and ice, and the moving water high above certainly had to work hard to push past the ice that had formed there! It was a beautiful sight.
Then on the way back we stopped at the downtown Commons to sample the chilis of the annual Ithaca Chili Cook-off. We bought our tickets and then stood in line to trade them in for steaming (but small) cups of chili. We tried five different vegetarian chilis before coming home. What with the sun shining in our windows on this gorgeous day and our contented stomachs, it’s difficult to fight off a nap!
Erin
Amidst the frenzy of grading papers, various delays due to snow (Sydney and I are both a bit sore — so much for thinking ourselves young and fit!), we did get to our classical concert last night. It was really good! The Orlando Consort, an early-music quartet from Britain, serenaded us in the beautiful old Sage Chapel on campus. It was WONDERFUL to hear an early music group!
However . . .
When Sydney and I chatted during intermission, he was seething about the squeaky-boot problem: everyone had trudged in through the snow, wearing snow boots, and so everytime someone shifted position, the boots and the slick wooden floor treated us all to a loud sqeak. Pair this idea with the fact that it’s a large, resonant wooden building with no sound-absorbent fabric, and you can see how such sounds could interfere with the music upfront. In the second half I, too, became distracted, as the elderly guy in front of us moved from one distraction to another: boot-squeaking, muttering to his wife, flipping through his program (and rustling the pages), holding up his glasses to see if they were clean, and even, toward the end, humming! Sydney was fuming, and I was absolutely bewildered. Though this aspect was not the most important, it certainly had Sydney riveted and gave us something to discuss when the concert was over!
Erin
So Erin and I just spent a couple of hours shovelling snow from our driveway and we were almost ready to leave … except the snowplow just came by, widening the road, i.e., dumping a truckload of snow on our driveway. To say this was annoying would be to understate things a tad …
Sydney
It’s difficult not to feel like a kid in snow like this. One step away from our door and I was knee-deep in snow. Halfway down our steps I had to push my way through a waist-high drift. It’s really nice not to be able to stride through and rely on long legs to keep me out of trouble. The snow resists me just as it did when I was a kid, though now it takes quite a lot more to get the same effect.
Erin
Or at least with certain kinds of praise.
The New York Magazine has a really interesting cover article on the dangers associated with praising kids. You really should read the article for yourself, but here’s the main point:
1) Kids who are told that they’re smart are more likely to underperform, to refuse challenges (after all, challenges threaten their status as smart), to stigmatize effort, to have shorter task persistence, to not feel as autonomous, to feel a need to cut down competitors, to lie about their own abilities, to cheat …
2) 85 percent of American parents think it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart.
Read the article; it has lots of interesting bits in it.
Maybe, just maybe, research like that reported in this article will help our culture finally shed its decades-long daft obsession with praise and self-esteem. One can only hope.
Sydney
Although I like teaching, I can’t say that I’m disappointed at having to stay home, do my reading, make casserole, and watch the snow fall.
Erin
Alan Schmierer