In Which I Have Baked

Successfully! It feels good to know that I'm not a failure at this, which was definitely one of my mom's gifts. I made Amish friendship bread from some starter that Sean's step mom Debbie gave me. It's basically a bag of goo that you have to "mush" every day for ten days, adding some flour and sugar in the middle while it does its business. I've discovered that fermentation of bread, like any other kind of alcohol production, smells kind of off-putting. It is not entirely pleasant to catch that scent wafting out of the cupboard in the morning as I grab my Cheerios, but how else would I remember to fulfill its daily mushing quotient?

The bread itself is good, it's basically a similar consistency to banana bread, it just tastes very sweet and cinnamon-y. Too sweet for my taste, actually. And I really don't think it's worth the time and money (3 eggs, 4 cups of flour, 4 cups of sugar, and a host of other surprisingly-expensive baking items go into each week's batch) to make bread that I could much more easily whip up with some blackened, frozen bananas. It is cool that it makes four separate starters each week, so I could pass three on and keep one. I plan on giving one to Linda and one to Mrs. Flanagan if I see her this weekend.

Sean comes home on Sunday! He's had a great trip thus far, and we've been fortunate to be able to talk a little every day, either by phone or email, so that I can assure Linda that her darling boy is safe and not having his kidneys removed in a bathtub full of ice. Last night in Killarney he even got to stay in a four star hotel because the two-star sister hotel he was booked into couldn't get his room ready in time. That kind of awesomeness is what traveling is all about!

Heather came back from Ireland last Sunday, and her little sister Hilary comes home from her Dublin study abroad tomorrow. Everyone's going to Ireland, it seems! Um, except based on what Heather told me, I feel confirmed in my opinion that it's not a place for me. On another note, all this talk of travel has given me the urge to buy another ticket to someplace, even though, yes, I obviously just came back from Italy, and the next place I go will probably be either Venice next year, if I study there, or Egypt with Sean. I wish, how I wish, we could go on the National Geographic Expedition to Egypt. You go to absolutely all of the awesome sites, you cruise on the Nile for a couple of days, and you get an Egyptologist as your guide! Incredible, right? So's the price--$14,000 for the two of us. Sigh. One can dream.

Sean's Irish Adventure

Not to be outdone by my trip to Italy last month, Sean took himself off to Ireland on Friday for a weeklong solo tour of the southwest portion of the country. Today he's in Kilkenny, where he made friends with a 50-year-old Englishman on top of a tower, with whom he has dinner plans this evening. That's just so Sean.

This weekend Sara and I visited Rae in Worcester, where we met her roommate and *cough* 'special friend' Dee, who has traveled extensively, including to everyone's favorite island of Malta. Interestingly, he presented a much different picture of the Maltese than what I gleaned from Carla's experiences; apparently he encountered a lot of sketchiness while he was there.

Included in our weekend sojourn to the "Land of the U-Turn" was a trip to a bridal store for some pre-pre-pre wedding shopping, wherein I discovered that two years is apparently not considered "early," as some people have actually bought dresses four years in advance! Sara and Rae found a full-length dress which they both liked, and the chocolate color looked absolutely awesome, except for the chorus of Jen-and-Carla voices who are clamoring for green.

I tried on two dresses, and learned that that lovely silhouette presented by most wedding dresses is not achieved by the dress alone; oh no, my friend, it requires an organ-squeezing corset, a voluminous petticoat (just like what a Victorian would have to wear, no lie--it's huge) and, in these dresses' case, a lace-up back that functioned like a second (and entirely unnecessary, since I could already barely breathe) corset. At the culmination of this process, I'll admit, one of the dresses was really pretty, had a long train, made me feel all Disney princessy, etc etc. Problem? I have no intention of being unable to bend, sit, eat or drink on my wedding day. My torso felt like it was made of iron, for crying out loud! I also have no intention of sweating my ass off in summer with ten pounds of fabric wrapped around me.

So, in conclusion--I really made no progress on that front whatsoever, besides deciding that I definitely want an ivory gown instead of white. White dresses are really kind of blinding, and let's be honest, this isn't much of a 'white wedding' anyway!

Tax Day

Today is the eighth anniversary of my dad's death. I don't have anything particularly meaningful to say, I just felt that I should mark the occasion in here somehow. Hard to believe it's been so many years.

On My Hatred of Weathermen and A Decision

How many times this winter were we promised storm-of-the-century-esque blizzards, only to wake up to an inch or two of snow? Similarly, I was apprehensive about our trip to Philadelphia on Friday because every weather service predicted heavy rains all day Friday and Saturday. Naturally, that didn't happen--Friday was cloudy, and maybe we saw a droplet here or there, but Saturday was absolutely gorgeous! I can't believe I spent so much time worrying over whether I should put the trip off in fear of having to see Temple in a downpour.

That said, the trip was great. Everyone warned me that Temple's in a rough area, and certainly when you get off the highway you're driving through blocks of a very run-down area. That changes dramatically, however, once you enter the campus area, where everything was well-kept, there were tons of people walking around and the scarlet T was emblazoned on everything from the manhole covers to the tops of high-rise buildings. We met up with two graduate students, both in the Phd program, who gave us a tour and answered all my questions. Sean and I couldn't help but feel like country mice at the mere size of Temple, which has tens of thousands of students to Fairfield's.....five? When they took us into the tech center that just had acres of computer rooms, I was laughing to myself because the library at Fairfield had maybe....thirty computers on the main floor? Yeah, small potatoes.

Most of the graduate students live outside Philadelphia in the suburbs on the PA side, although one of the grad students I met, Aliza, actually lives in Center City. That's probably what I'll be doing as well. I'm not a city person, and I guess it only struck me this weekend that I'll be spending the next five or more years in a city! It's OK, I should learn to live in a city. I like what I've seen of Philly so far. Saturday (we spent Friday night at Richardson's apartment in Cherry Hill)I went into the city via the ridiculously 70s PATCO train, and allowed myself the luxury of a taxi to the art museum, which gave me a pleasant, if brief, tour of Center City. The museum itself is gorgeous from the outside, and really impressive inside as well. I only had about an hour before I was supposed to meet Dr. Hall, so I basically took the museum at a trot. Bronzino's "Portrait of Cosimo I as Orpheus" greeted me on my way into the European art gallery. Ah, Mannerism.

I had lunch with Dr. Hall in the museum restaurant, a place I never approach in any other institution because it's always ridiculously expensive. This one was no different, although she graciously treated me to lunch. Still, $29 for one of the smallest lunches I have ever had, even if it was delicious. I told her my decision to come to Temple, and we had a really pleasant lunch. She's an older woman, very elegant looking but with a rather quirky, offbeat sense of humor that I liked.

So there it is--my decision is made. Now I have to email all my professors, and Dr. McHam from Rutgers who was sending me very persuasive emails. I liked her too, but alas, you can't have it all.

Anne of the Century

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables, one of my favorite books growing up. Jen and I had the whole set of seven books then. Only a well-worn copy of Anne of the Island (the book I loved most out of the entire seven-book series) endures from that collection, but I picked up a brand new set at a tag sale a couple of years ago. It's funny that I couldn't bring myself to discard the old copy of Anne of the Island, when I had a perfectly new one in the very same edition, the same cover and typeface and everything, but there's a lot of history in that volume. Its spine is cracked, its cover worn, and so many pages dog-eared because of the number of times I read it and dreamed of being just like Anne--beautiful, spirited, and seeing the magic in everything.

The anniversary came to my attention because Gawker had an item mentioning that Margaret Atwood had written an essay on the book for a London newspaper (there's a link to it here. It's a good enough essay, but the best thing about it was that it made me want to read the books again, which I did tonight, at least two of them: Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island. Apparently for Atwood the other books couldn't come close to the original story, but for me it was that first trilogy that really sparked my imagination and remained warmly in my memory. This is probably due in no small part to that fact that Anne's friendship and semi-turbulent courtship with Gilbert Blythe takes place over the course of these three novels--spoiler alert, they get engaged at the end of book three! Rereading those pages tonight, I lingered on this paragraph at the end of Anne of Avonlea, which has caught my eye before:


Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself through seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music; perhaps...perhaps...love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from a green sheath.


Yes, there's some parts of the books where the nature imagery and the romanticism of it all forces me to skip ahead paragraphs or even pages--I can handle only so many descriptions of sun-dappled fields, so many exultations over fields of poppies or a formation of clouds, before I get a little impatient. It's also true that the movie versions of Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea (although the latter, for reasons of narration, was really a patchwork of the second and third books along with some made-up elements) did a great deal to cement the books, and Anne herself, in my mind's eye. There will never be another Anne for me but the actress who played her in those two movies; the Anne drawn on the bookcovers is merely an approximation. The handsome actor who played Gilbert, meanwhile, was probably one of my very first crushes in life, and I have to confess that if I had to choose between the Gilbert of the books and the Gilbert of the movies, I'll take the cinematic version, because he's just a little more spirited than his literary alter ego.

I guess it's hard to separate the magic of the books and movies in my mind, because both have been mutually reinforced by re-readings and re-watchings (last night, too tired to start one of the books, I watched clips from both movies on Youtube). The movies' score never fails to stir me, and I can't really describe the way I feel when I hear it, especially during those scenes when she stands on the cliffs of Prince Edward Island, and the wind blows the long grass behind her.

I've always wanted to see PEI, even though I know it's not the pristine, untouched place it was a hundred years ago when LM Montgomery was writing. I'm sure I'd be disappointed by the tourist spectacle that they've manufactured there--Atwood writes about the "Green Gables" they've tarted up, which apparently even includes the cameo brooch Marilla accuses Anne of stealing in the first book. I also have no interest in seeing the Anne of Green Gables musical. In fact, I'm kind of sad I even had to write that phrase. Anne was never a musical girl, she was a dramatist, a poet--I never forgot "The Lady of Shallott" or "The Highwayman" after she recites both of them in the movies. Probably the more so for the former, because of the whole Elaine floating down to Camelot stunt. Come on, did anyone who read that book NOT want to hop in a skiff, make like a corpse, and float downriver till you spring a leak and have to cling to a bridge pier until your erstwhile enemy sexily rescues you? That was the stuff of daydreams when I was younger, I tell you!

That's what's amazing about these century-old books, the way they still have the power to affect me. I still feel close to Anne when I read them (she would have said "kindred spirits"); I still laugh when she pulls off a particularly clever reply or when Davy asks hugely inappropriate questions the way little kids do, and I still cry at some parts, especially when Ruby Gillis dies in the third book. She was a girlhood friend of Anne's and they've grown apart because Ruby is really only interested in guys, but everyone knows she's dying of consumption and she's too terrified to talk about it to anyone but Anne. It's just so heartbreaking to read as Ruby, who Anne later reflects has really stored up all her treasures here on earth, talks about her struggle with fate: "I'm so young, Anne. I haven't had my life. I've fought so hard to live--and it isn't any use--I have to die--and leave everything that I cared for."

You know, I always go back and forth on whether I want a daughter or a son (because, as you know, Sean and I only want one; we're like Communist China) and usually I'm all for the son, having been a daughter already, but tonight after re-reading those books it strikes me that I want to give those to another little girl someday, and watch them ignite the tinder of her imagination like they once did mine.