book worm.

Lately I’ve been reading much more than I had been. I had [temporarily] forgotten the joy of reading which is, of course, ironic since one of my goals as a teacher is to instill in my students a love for reading.

I love the feeling of being totally immersed in what I’m reading, of thinking about ideas and feelings I hadn’t meaningfully understood previously, of putting myself in a completely different time period with characters whose experiences teach me something about my own. It broadens my understanding of, well, everything. And sometimes it makes me laugh.

I think, ultimately, what I love about reading most is its uncanny ability to help me be more empathetic.

(And I love that it gives you something more interesting to talk about than “The Bachelor.”)

What have you been reading? Any book recommendations?

Here are mine: one terribly trashy novel with hilarious sex scenes, one for sheer entertainment with some pithy self-reflection thrown in for good measure, and one beautifully written work of art that made me cry. Variety is good in our diets and good in our book choices too.

lv, molly

{This trashy novel features horrible double entendres and is set in the Scottish highlands– what more could you ask for? Oh, intelligence and depth? See below, dear friend!}

{This book is hilarious, honest, and self-depricating. And even insightful– her reflection on her friendship with gay men is amazing. I love this book.}

{This book is, simply put, one of the most beautiful books I’ve read. Normally when a novel gets a lot of hype, I look the other way. But it came highly recommended from teachers I respect, and I fell in love with it from the first page on.}

variation on a theme by rilke.

A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me–a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day’s blow
rang out, metallic–or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.

by Denise Levertov

happy october!

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.

By Emily Bronte

WOW! … and what shall we tackle next?

First off, readers, I’m loving the passion you’re bringing to the table.

Who knew pie would be such a topic of conversation, and all of your tips and comments have been a joy to read! This past week, I’ve learned more about pie than ever, and I’m definitely a better baker now (and even more obsessed with it) because of you!

I have one last pie dough recipe to test this weekend, using butter AND crisco. I decided to use both because butter provides a wonderful flavor, and crisco provides flakiness. Perhaps the two combined will render an award-winning crust! I’ll post that recipe, photos, and the results on Sunday. And mid-week, I’ll share which reader posted the winning recipe and how I placed at the state-fair. (Also, I’m totally doing it up in style and wearing something old-fashioned. It seems only appropriate.)

In other non-pie-related news, you simply must see The Room. Do you know what it is? See here… It’s ridiculous, and last night I laughed for two hours straight (thanks to pilates, my abs can handle this). Plus, I threw a plastic spoon or five and accidentally hit a man in the head. (Sorry, sir!)

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, readers, filled with happiness and sun. Check back on Monday for more pie-related goodness… and then I’ll conquer another dish. Maybe attempt a vegetarian paella? Or a soba dish? Or muffins? Who knows what’s on the horizon.

What dish or baked good do you think I should try to master next?

lv, molly

And some links for weekend entertainment…

This smoothie looks simply delicious. Thanks for the idea, Ana!
A thoughtful editorial.
Would you eat here? If they offered some non-seafood dishes, I’d be there in a minute.
Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan look absolutely stunning. Have you been there?
This photo makes me feel better about how my kitchen looked much of this week.

mark twain’s love letter to olivia clemens.

Out of the depths of my happy heart wells a great tide of love and prayer for this priceless treasure that is confided to my life-long keeping.

You cannot see its intangible waves as they flow towards you, darling, but in these lines you will hear, as it were, the distant beating of the surf.

nerd postcards.

I picked up these vintage book cover postcards by Penguin yesterday, and I’m swooning. They’re so nice and nerdy. And I’m giving them to my students on my last day. A befitting gesture of an English teacher, I think, though we’ll see if they think they’re as adorable as I do. lv, molly

“untitled” by anna moschovakis.

I can’t remember what it is I’m supposed to be doing.
I can’t think of anything but lists I’ve made, lists I’ve broken
the spirit of. It’s always a fine time for breaking
things, like plastic forks and poetic trends.
It’s a damn good morning to imitate the world.
But I can’t remember what imitation is
or the difference between it and flattery
or an adage and an aphorism.
I’d better go back to school
he said, performing a gesture to alterity.
I can’t remember if alterity
has negative connotations
or is just another way of kicking
myself out the door. I’d like to try being
a man for once. I’d like to wear chaps and have it
be obscene instead of pornographic. I can never remember
what I think of pornography when it isn’t in my
face. I wish I could be inanimate,
banged-up and appreciated
for all my surface qualities
without ethics getting in the way. I seem to remember
being ethical. I seem to act along some kind of line
albeit a kinky one. I wonder when kinky became
pornographic and whether that aspect is
subtractable. I don’t remember my grammar
rules. I don’t think English is very good
for a certain kind of inventioning. I gather
some readers don’t like being
confronted with the language in every word.
I want to be a word. I would be abstract
with an inscrutable ending.

poem of the week.

Unknown Bird by W.S. Merwin

Out of the dry days
through the dusty leaves
far across the valley
those few notes never
heard here before

one fluted phrase
floating over its
wandering secret
all at once wells up
somewhere else

and is gone before it
goes on fallen into
its own echo leaving
a hollow through the air
that is dry as before

where is it from
hardly anyone
seems to have noticed it
so far but who now
would have been listening

it is not native here
that may be the one
thing we are sure of
it came from somewhere
else perhaps alone

so keeps on calling for
no one who is here
hoping to be heard
by another of its own
unlikely origin

trying once more the same few
notes that began the song
of an oriole last heard
years ago in another
existence there

it goes again tell
no one it is here
foreign as we are
who are filling the days
with a sound of our own

procrastination + cartographies of time.

Frequently, I stumble upon a concept that fascinates me, and I lose track of what I’m supposed to be doing. My train has currently been derailed. Instead of designing rubrics this afternoon, I spent far too much time reading about cartography, the study of making and designing maps. Cartographies of time are graphic representations of historical events.

In the beginning of the 17th century, chronologers compiled the dates of historical events that schoolchildren were expected to memorize and created visual representations that served as memory aids to improve retention. The image of the knight (image 2) depicts four significant monarchies, each monarchy’s name and description placed on a part of the body that the cartographer deemed representative of the respective monarchy’s strengths and weaknesses.

Image 1 is an historical map of Italy. This is my favorite because it’s intuitive, quite beautiful, and metaphoric. The streams at the top of the map represent nations conquered by the Roman empire, and these streams connect to the lake at the center, representative of the empire itself.

The clouds in image 3 signify the extent of Earth’s surface that was known to the West. As the series of maps progresses (I’ve only posted one), the clouds retreat; more light shines through; and the map of the world known to the West is revealed through the clouds.

In a college history class, my professor discussed image 4. It might be the most elegant map created; intuitive and aesthetically pleasing, it conveys myriad kinds of information central to a comprehensive understanding of Napoleon’s march while retaining a degree of simplicity. It depicts the attrition of the army and its trajectory as it crossed the Alps to Russia. The width of the line is indicative of the number of troops in the army, and you can see that this line thins significantly as the black line (representative of temperature) grows.

If you’re interested in learning more (because who isn’t! ok, maybe you!), check out Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline. It’s fascinating to consider how different cultures conceived of their own histories and how they tried to convey both time and history in a visual medium. lv, molly

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{2}

{3}

{4}

Images via Biblio Odyssey

happy weekend!

{what i want to wear all weekend}

I hope you have a good one!

I’m making soup, going to a concert, and doing an ungodly amount of grading. The students wrote speeches about historical figures who inspire them, and I’m actually really excited to read them. I think they’ll be charming and potentially quite amusing.

Wishing you a great weekend! Here are a few entertaining links and a delicious soup recipe from The New York Times… lv, molly

* An excellent “Daily Show” episode focused on education; I love Jon Stewart even more (features an NYU professor too, holler!)

* Polenta + Poppyseed Cupcakes

* Cocktail dresses

* Tom Waits + Robert Frank in NYC

UPDATE: I TOTALLY MESSED UP THIS SOUP! IT WAS GROSS! Maybe because I didn’t actually puree it! But something was seriously off. Any tips? My mom’s made this innumerable times, and it was delicious. Blargh!!!!!

Red Lentil Soup with Lemon

Serves 4

3 Tbl olive oil, more for drizzling
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbl tomato paste
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp kosher salt, more to taste
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
Pinch of ground chili powder or cayenne, more to taste
1 quart chicken or vegetable broth
1 C red lentils
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
Juice of 1/2 lemon, more to taste
3 Tbl chopped fresh cilantro

In a large pot, heat 3 tablespoons oil over high heat until hot and shimmering. Add onion and garlic, and sauté until golden, about 4 minutes.
Stir in tomato paste, cumin, salt, black pepper and chili powder or cayenne, and sauté for 2 minutes longer.
Add broth, 2 cups water, lentils and carrot. Bring to a simmer, then partially cover pot and turn heat to medium-low. Simmer until lentils are soft, about 30 minutes. Taste and add salt if necessary.
Using an immersion or regular blender or a food processor, purée half the soup then add it back to pot. Soup should be somewhat chunky.
Reheat soup if necessary; then stir in lemon juice and cilantro. Serve soup drizzled with good olive oil and dusted lightly with chili powder if desired.

song.

{irish countryside}

by Seamus Heaney

A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes. 

There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.

land.

by Suheir Hammad

his approach
to love he said
was that of a farmer
most love like
hunters and like
hunters most kill
what they desire
he tills
soil through toes
nose in the wet
earth he waits
prays to the gods
and slowly harvests
ever thankful

life of pi.

When my students read, I read too. I think it’s good for kids to see adults reading, as I want reading to become a lifelong passion for my students.

Currently, I’m re-reading Life Of Pi by Yann Martel. As someone who enjoys being contrarian, I assumed I’d hate this book since it won the Booker Prize in 2002, and critics and friends fawned over it. But I love this book. It’s beautifully written, and it’s about animals, religion, suffering, and peace. Simply put, it’s quite an extraordinary read, and it’s funny at times. Plus, he talks about sloths. I love sloths.

Any books you’d like to recommend? lv, molly

Life Of Pi begins…

“My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

Academic study and the steady, mindful practice of religion brought me back to life. I have kept up what some people would consider my strange religious practices. After one year of high school, I attended the University of Toronto and took a double-major Bachelor’s degree. My majors were religious studies and zoology. My fourth-year thesis for religious studies concerned certain aspects of the cosmology theory of Isaac Luria, the great sixteenth-century Kabbalist from Safed. My zoology thesis was a functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose the sloth because its demeanor- calm, quiet, introspective- did something to soothe my shattered self.

[...]

The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. ‘A good-natured smile is forever on its lips,’ reported Tirler (1966). I have seen that smile with my own eyes. I am not one given to projecting human traits and emotions on to animals, but many a time during that month in Brazil, looking up at the sloths in repose, I felt I was in the presence of upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intensive lives were beyond the reach of my scientific probing.

Sometimes I get my majors mixed up.”

approach of winter.

by

William Carlos Williams

The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine–
like no leaf that ever was–
edge the bare garden.

new year, new look.

After myriad technical errors, the new look has arrived! I’m not 100% sold, and I might switch back to the standby. But trying on a new look is a good idea for the new year, me thinks.

Also, the Recipe Index is totally updated and now neatly organized with a drop-down menu with categories. I’m impressed because I can hardly get myself to organize my desk.

Enjoy the last hours of 2010, and I hope you have a wonderfully happy time welcoming the new year.

Here’s one of my favorite poems to read on New Year’s.

lots of lv, molly

Auld Lang Syne

“For the sake of old times,” Scottish Poet Robert Burns

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wandered mony a weary fit
Sin’ auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

*Image*