Awesome

It's always gratifying when a student expresses appreciation for a class, especially if they acknowledge having been uninterested in the topic at the beginning.  My favorite this semester had been this beefy guy, Mike, in my ancient art survey, who actually shook my hand at the end and thanked me for making it "not boring"!  But I think he might have just been trumped by one of my modern survey students, Naadiya:

"Hi Professor DiMarzo,

I just remembered...that I forgot to tell you thanks at the end of the semester. I'd come into class on the first day confused as to why I had to even take Art History when my major was Human Services. But as the classes went on I realized that even if it had nothing to do with my major it was still interesting to learn. I'd heard a lot of things about Art History classes and how they were boring but I was very happy to find that they were wrong. You made class very energetic and I was always looking forward to coming there every week. 

Recently I was going through the guide on TV and came across a show that talked about the many paintings that the Louvre had and prior to your class it wouldn't have even registered in my brain. But I found myself making my whole family sit down to watch it with me and when the paintings came up that I knew I went into full blown explanations about each one. 

I realize now how much of an impact a teacher can make on a person and how they view things that are new to them. I think people don't tell others thank you enough and really take the time to express their gratitude. Thanks Mrs. DiMarzo for opening a new door and giving me another good reason to beg my parents to let me go to Paris."

ETA my response:

Hi Naadiya,

Thanks for your email; it's always wonderful to hear from students who have enjoyed an art history class, particularly when they acknowledge not having had too much interest in it at the start (I've been there--I signed up for my first AH course because it looked like the easiest way to fulfill a requirement!)  I'm thrilled that this course has inspired your desire to travel and visit museums--and how great for your family, too, to now have their own budding tour guide!

I'm not sure what your plans are beyond your associate's degree, but if you plan to transfer to another school in the future and find yourself in need of a recommendation, let me know.  In the meantime, as the Italians say, buona fortuna and buon viaggio!  :-)

Holiday Week

Today was the first day this week that we had no plans of any kind.  So, naturally, I started it off in kickboxing class at 9am with Linda, and boy, did we feel it. It was kind of ridiculous, actually; I went to kick last Monday night, and I didn't even eat that much in the intervening days, but it still felt harder than it has since the first couple of times I went.  Then I came home and gave the house a thorough cleaning (thorough meaning "even the baseboards"), so everything looks and smells lemony-fresh now.  The all-purpose cleaner recipe I got from the Green Clean book works pretty well; true, it does leave streaks on the laminated countertops, but I suppose that's what you pay for lacking in toxic fumes.

For reference (I've never written this down, I just keep using Amazon's "Look Inside" function, since it shows up on a visible page)

1 tsp borax
2 tsp washing soda
1/2 tsp castile soap
10 drops lemon essence
2 cups boiling water

Anyway, our holiday week started off on Monday night at Shane and Nicole's new house, where we were celebrating their long-anticipated engagement (Sean and I elected not to attend the World's Most Overblown Proposal in Providence on Sunday evening).  Minus Richardson, the old gang was all there, since even Iannone, who rarely shows his face during his blitzkrieg visits from Chicago, came around.

Christmas Eve is always spent with Sean's dad, first at Sean's aunt Kathy's house, with the many "characters" of the extended Gleason clan.  There were two new additions, baby Noah, who was born to Sean's first cousin Amy, and Isabella, born to Sean's, um, I guess second cousin, Samantha.  Amy is 40, and Samantha is 20 or so (it's always thrown me that Sean can have a first cousin who's 20 years older; that's because the six Gleason children, of which Sean's dad is in the middle, spanned about two decades in age).  That means that Sean's dad is a great-uncle to one baby and a great-great uncle to the other!

After Kathy's, we were spared the traditional gift-giving fest at Danny's house.  Well, Sean and I went over, but Dana was sick in bed and the girls were at their dad's house, so we exchanged gifts pretty quickly.  Danny gave me an awesome chef's knife, Dana got me another lovely scarf (the grey one she gave me last year is one of my favorites, so she's good at this), and, rather unexpectedly, I also got a tablet from Sean's dad.  Honestly, I was completely thrown when I unwrapped it because I thought it was a phone, and I was thinking "oh my god, I don't want this" before Danny pointed out it was a tablet.  Much preferable!  It works great with the Chromecast I got from Linda.  I refrained from downloading the Tumblr app or the Facebook app, though--I'm already on my computer all the time, I really don't need to have constant access in every room of the house.

Christmas was a really fun day. Alas, my major present for Sean, the refurbishment of the Buick, hasn't gone anywhere yet, but he really liked a gift that I actually picked up at a tag sale, a double clock/tide clock that has a map of New Haven and its harbor as the background.  His gift for me was awesome--we're going to take a cooking class at Sur La Table in Canton the night before our (dating) anniversary, and then stay in a bed-and-breakfast that has chickens.  And guests are welcome to gather eggs in the morning.  Yessss.  Those chickens don't know it but they're going to make a new friend on January 6.

 I went to Linda's early, since Sean was slow in getting dressed.  Gary's mother was there already, so I was able to help Linda out by holding up the conversation. Luckily, Gary's  father, Sal--who is a close talker, prone to delivering the same 1950s life advice repeatedly over the course of an evening, while holding the advisee's hand--had gone to visit a lady friend down the road.  Alice, his wife, is more of a hoot, and she loves to drink at holidays, so we had the white wine flowing at 1pm, just how I like it!  Even the later arrival of Linda's sister didn't ruin things, which is pretty impressive.

We spent the day after Christmas with my sister, and it too was (surprisngly) fun.  I showed her how to make pasta fagioli, though it had to be slightly modified upon the discovery that she lacked a blender or food processor.  In terms of cooking, Jen is where I was maybe five years ago; "cooking" to her (and to Vinny, despite his Italian background) is cracking a jar of Prego. I'm not sure I sold her on the "cooking can be fun, no really!" spiel, but hopefully I struck a balance between "inspirational" and "Jen you idiot, have you never used a knife before?"  Despite the chunkiness, the sauce turned out great, and we spent the afternoon playing games (I won at Scrabble, possibly only my third win against Sean in...9 years?) before we went to see "American Hustle".  During the previews Jen told me, quite solemnly, that I'm one of her best friends. She's done this before, and I'm always glad if I can keep my composure on and not start grinning.  I love my sister, definitely, but...I consider a best friend someone you don't (often) want to strangle (Carla and the chewing gum, Carla and the slamming of drawers in the early am...haha).

Yesterday, to bring our week to a grand finale, we went up to Newtown to see Phyllis.  It's a lovely, old-New-England type of area, with lots of gorgeous houses and hills that give you stunning views over the surrounding valleys.  We had lunch at a historic inn, which was honestly nothing special, and toured the library, which was once the home of the town's most prominent family, the Hawleys (among their treasures: a butter dish once used by George Washington, egads!).  It was an incredible public library, with an entire section devoted to art books, another to theater, another to music--a clear sign of a well-educated and well-heeled tax base.

It's always wonderful to see Phyllis.  I lived with her for four years, so her mannerisms and her way of speaking, which are all quite idiosyncratic, are as familiar to me as though I'd known her my whole life.  I told Sean afterward that it feels like meeting up with a family member (and honestly, I saw Phyllis more times in 2013 than I saw my aunts!).  You can really have a conversation with her about anything, since she's just had such an incredible range of life experiences.  Sean sometimes worries about the shape our lives will take without children to define them, but I consider her a prime example of how without children (or in her case, even without a partner), you can shape your life into something full and wonderful.  Not only are Phyllis' friends some of the most varied and seriously well-informed people I've ever met, she has one of the most active social calendars of any nearly-60-year-old women I know of.  (Actually, let's be honest, I don't know if I'll ever have the energy to live quite that fully).

After we parted ways, we drove to Bethel, a town maybe 15 minutes away, to check out the Rainy Day Paperback exchange.  We walked out with a stack of books between us, all for $34!  Highlights include a Latin copy of "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas"and a book about the history of mathematics for Sean, while I walked away with several art history books, EM Forster's Notes on the Novel Form and An Assembly Such as This, the retelling of P&P from Darcy's perspective that I learned about in Among the Janeites.  Not a bad haul.

I'm a little relieved that tomorrow's planned outing to NYC for Daniel's birthday is being cancelled because of the oncoming rain...I feel like I need another day just to unwind from all the unwinding!

Books and Food, Books on Food

Yesterday, I was trying to remember some of the books I've read over the course of 2013; I logged on to my library account hoping to see my list of check-outs, but discovered that you have to opt-in for that service, as a nod to privacy concerns. Fair enough. After a bit of brain-wracking, I discovered that with a couple of exceptions (the Pride & Prejudice mystery Death Comes to Pemberley; the two fat and thoroughly satirical volumes of Mark Twain's Roughing It), the books whose titles were actually popping to mind were mostly about food. It may be a coincidence that this was the same year that I started cooking more complicated meals, but only some of the books I read appealed on a gastronomic level; several had the opposite effect, increasing my doubt and dissatisfaction with many of the food options available to us on a regular basis.

As far as I can remember, this all started with Sugar, Salt, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, which I was eager to read after listening to the author being interviewed on NPR on one of my many long drives down to Philadelphia in the winter. The book didn't disappoint; it unveiled how food companies have increasingly packed our food with chemicals that are cheaper than the ingredients they replaced, and are continually tweaking the levels of sugar, salt and fat in a given product to achieve the perfect "bliss point" of taste. It was surprising to think of some of our beloved food products, many of which been a part of our diets our whole lives, as continually in flux, but apparently companies never stop changing and testing, not only to save more money but to attract new consumers. There were some really great-slash-horrifying origin stories in the book, not least about how the Lunchable was created (and boy, am I glad now that my mom never bought them for us, not that I recall being particularly envious of those who had them). Eating processed food is like playing in a casino--the house always wins. When foods are designed to be as delicious and addictive as possible, your poor body can't help but want them, even when they contribute negligibly to actual nutrition.

Michael Pollan's short book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto described this environment as one filled with "foodlike substances" rather than actual food. He offered a number of deceptively simple suggestions for eating more whole foods: choose foods that your grandmother would recognize as food (no Go-Gurt or soy product), for example, and if you eat processed foods, choose ones that have fewer than five ingredients, and make sure you can pronounce all of them. After I read the book I spent a little time surveying the contents of our pantry, and was surprised that we still had a number of things that didn't fit the profile of "food", pure and simple. This, despite the fact that 2013 has been a banner year for us in terms of improving what and how we eat: we have less processed food and refined grains on hand, and more fruits and vegetables than ever before; we cook regularly, and make our own versions of easy items like hummus, salad dressing, and peanut butter; we try not to buy crap.

To be fair, sometimes it's a rock-and-a-hard place choice--like making our own bread. Would it be healthier to have homemade multigrain bread? Sure, as long as we could keep our hands off it, which we couldn't. Our time on the dysglycemia diet, when we were only supposed to eat a single serving of grains (ie, 1 slice) per day, made the decision to retire the breadmaker much easier. That diet, by the way, was responsible for helping us break a lot of our dependence on grains; we're no longer following it strictly, but Sean now drinks a kale, berry, and peanut-butter protein smoothie for breakfast in place of oatmeal, and I have eggs, fruit, and almonds in place of my old friend, Cheerios. I haven't eaten a granola bar since May, when I replaced them with cheese sticks. Pasta has made a return, along with the aforementioned sandwich bread, but we're much more careful about it than before. Just the other night, making pasta for the two of us, I threw in a whole cupful of dry pasta for myself, and then complained that it was too much--Sean, enjoying 1/2 a cup, laughed and pointed out that last year, we'd have split the entire box of pasta.

Another eye-opening book was The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table, by Tracy McMillan. I referred to this as Nickel and Dimed: Food Edition, because that's pretty much what it was. Instead of reading about the experience of a Minute Maid in Maine, I read about what it's like to be a migrant farmer picking peaches, garlic and grapes in California; the massive food waste in Walmart's produce sections; and the "foodlike substances" that are prepackaged and reheated for your eating, um, pleasure, at chain restaurants like Applebee's. We're not chain restaurant eaters anyway, but if we were, I'd be seriously grossed out by how little actual cooking is going on in those kitchens! One of Sean's friends loves Olive Garden, despite living in New Haven, where the Italian food is fantastic. It boggles the mind--or rather, it would, until you consider that those restaurants are extensions of the food-industrial complex described in Sugar Salt Fat: those pre-made dishes are designed to hit you right in the tastebuds and keep you coming back for more. Plus, breadsticks.

My reading has taken a pleasant turn more recently, however, starting with Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste by Luke Barr.  I was familiar with Child and Beard (the latter only because of the award named after him), but not Fisher, who was one of the first well-known American food writers, beginning in the 1930s.  Profoundly influenced by her love of France and French cuisine, she wrote essays and books that explored the sensual pleasures of the table--at a time when that concept was largely anathema to Puritan-inflected America. The author of the book is Fisher's great-nephew, and he based it on the voluminous correspondence preserved among and by the personalities in the book, as well as his aunt's meticulous journal covering the winter of 1970, when she, Child, Beard, and a raft of other American culinary lights happened all to be in Provence at the same time, sharing meals and wine together.**  He argues that 1970 represented an important moment of tension for the American food scene after decades of dominance by French haute cuisine, and among the individuals present in Provence that winter he identifies members of the various factions--the old guard and the purists (Child's stormy French collaborator, Simone Beck, and the perfectionist American ex-pat Richard Olney) vs. those ready for a breath of something new, and perhaps no longer exclusively European (Child, Fisher, Beard). 

The book managed to evoke the smells and tastes of the meals just as well as the turbulent personalities of those who created and enjoyed them, and left me with the desire to visit Provence, and to drink and taste some of what they describe. True, I'm not much interested in the snails, oysters, or sea urchins, but rabbit stew, braised slowly over low heat in a pan sealed with a piece of fabric dipped in water and flour, to form an airtight seal? Count me in. Same for sole meuniere, the fish which converted Julia Child to French cuisine upon her arrival in France--sole fillets dredged in milk and flour, fried in butter, and garnished with butter and lemon juice. (I have aspirations of making this after the holidays, as soon as I can locate sole fillets).  I should add, though, that I sensed more hidden issues of class and snobbery at play here than did Barr (who was clearly raised with money, and who is now an editor at Travel + Leisure).  For for example, I found myself rolling my eyes when Fisher mourned how crass and commercial, how American, everything in la belle France was becoming by 1970, in contrast to the pre-war halcyon days. Somehow her attitude, which was shared by Child and the others, seemed terribly selfish.  France is not for you, I kept wanting to say.  It's not some sort of Eden for wearied Americans to recharge their cultural and gastronomic batteries; it's a living culture, not an artifact displayed for your pleasure in a museum. 

At any rate, after I finished the book I read some of Fisher's own  work, starting with the rather eclectic Serve it Forth from 1937.  Julia Child's My Life in France is on my to-read (I even watched Julie and Julia, but only for the Meryl Streep parts; Amy Adams' plotline was so terrible I couldn't even bear to watch her).  I've just started another book by Michael Pollan, as well: Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, and so far it's excellent.  More food reading, more food-making, and of course, more eating is to come between now and the New Year!

**Wouldn't it be great if one day, some grand-niece or grand-nephew of mine wanted to use this blog as material for a novel?  

Lost in Austen

I just finished reading Among the Janeites: a Journey through the World of Jane Austen Fandom.  It was a fairly quick read, but its breadth was somewhat surprising;honestly, I was just expecting some breezy commentary on the films, fanfiction, and cheesy Jane Austen tours in England, but the author managed to suss out plenty of interesting topics and colorful characters to interview.  She explores the tension between academics and non-specialist fans (guess who tends to look down on whom?); she probes the issue of what it actually means to be a "fan" of someone who's a pop-culture powerhouse as well as part of the literary canon (is it OK just to like the films?  Are you still a real fan if you've never read Persuasion or Mansfield Park, even though you love Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility?); she tries to achieve, through expensive corsetry, the Empire-waisted look at a JASNA (Jane Austen Society of North America) meeting.

Maybe all great literature is like a mirror held up to the reader, but it seems  Jane Austen offers more fodder than most.  For example, Yaffe interviews a clinical nurse who became convinced  that not only do many of the characters in Austen's novels display traits of borderline personality disorder (in the four types: waif, hermit, queen, witch), but that these characters reflect the actual borderline disorder suffered by Austen's mother.  Unsurprisingly, the life of this woman, Christine Shih, had been shaped by the borderline personality disorder suffered by both of her parents, and she came to see Austen's novels as a way of dealing with the emotional wreckage.  Another woman Jaffe interviews, a speech pathologist, is convinced that many of Austen's characters, like the children she treats, fall somewhere on the autism spectrum.  Chief among these is Mr. Darcy--she suggests that explains his comment to Elizabeth at Lady de Bourgh's house, about how he lacks the ability to converse with strangers.  It's an interesting thesis--they both are--but you get a sense that it's easy to become blinkered, capable of reading the novels only from your parochial perspective. (I enjoy one online commentator's point: "You know, sometimes people aren't autistic...sometimes, people are just dicks.") Or, as one academic put it, a lot of writing on Jane Austen, academic or otherwise, turns out to be "mutilated intellectual autobiography."  Burn.

 I haven't read Mansfield Park or Persuasion (I've seen an unprepossessing film version of the latter, with a young-ish Ciaran Hinds as the male protagonist), so I suppose those will have to go on my reading list.  Not that I think I qualify as an Austen fan at the level of many of the people written about in Yaffe's book; for one thing, I'm not really interested in Austen's own life and times. *shrug*  I am kind of envious of the JASNA members getting together with other people who really love a book you love, who are willing to talk about it on a deeper level than "ooh, Colin Firth is so hot!"  I miss that about college literature courses.  Over the summer I thought about joining a book club that reads classic and contemporary fiction, but they always meet in loud pubs downtown, and I'd prefer something a little more like the book club Phyllis was in, rotating among people's homes (though Phyllis' book club had its own torrid history of feuds and power-grabs, so maybe that's not a great example).  Sean pointed out that a lot of people might not have the space to host, especially if they live in apartments, which is true; god knows we couldn't fit twenty people in here.  Still, how much thoughtful conversation can you have shouting over a plate full of wings at Christy's?  The East Haven library does one classic read a month, though the next couple of months' books don't really interest me. March's book is Larch Rise to Candleford; maybe I'll join in for that one.

Snow Weekend

The anticipation of a winter storm, especially one that falls on a weekend, can be pretty fun.  I got up early on Friday morning to hit the grocery store, and we've been cooking up a storm.  Friday afternoon I made another batch of the creamy white bean and chorizo soup, mostly to freeze.  Saturday morning Sean made pignoli cookies for the cookie swap; we didn't wind up going because of the weather, so the cookies wound up divided between Hubbard, our neighbors, and Sean, since I find these cookies repulsive because of the almond paste, blech.  In the afternoon he made one huge pot of sauce, along with a small pot of pasta fagioli sauce for me. (There's a neat distinction around here that "sauce" refers only the traditional meat-based concoction that brews for four or five hours on a weekend afternoon, while all other sauce concoctions have to be given their proper names.  So where I would just say that Sean made two different sauces, everyone else would say he made pasta fagioli and Sauce).

I stocked up on books and movies at the library, though we haven't watched a single one of those I brought home.  I was particularly on the lookout for movies you can't get on Netflix, like Julie and Julia.  We went to the see The Hobbit on Friday night, which I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about in advance, but I have to admit to liking it better than the first.  I really do resent that this one children's book has been dragged out into a trilogy; maybe it was indeed Peter Jackson's "vision", but you know it had to be one gleefully encouraged by the studio suits!   I annoyed Sean by peppering him with questions in his ear during the movie ("Why are wood-elves unstable?" "Who kills Smaug in the end?") because apparently I am now That Girl (fond memories of Carla sitting down to watch half of Godfather 3 having never seen the other two...).  I can't say I was super-impressed by Smaug or Benedict Cumberbatch's voice-over. *shrug*  It's a dragon?  Yay?

Last night we watched Love Actually, which I assume I've probably watched almost every year since it first came out in 2003.  Ten years!  Unbelievable.  Honestly, I can't remember seeing it in the theater, though Sean assures me that all of us freshmen girls went together; the viewing I remember best was sophomore year, in Meredith and Popham's room that always seemed incredibly over-pink thanks to Popham's belongings and hot pink duvet.  We swooned over Rodrigo Santoro (Sean also helpfully reminded me that we nicknamed him "Pablo" for some reason), and someone eventually made Popham a huge glossy printed collage of pictures of him.  You can see the collage in the background of a photo of me and Sean that's sitting on the bookcase in our upstairs hallway.  We look really, really young--I was still flat-ironing my hair back then, and Sean was in his manorexic stage.

This morning I was Skyping with Carla and she told me about an article claiming that the movie is actually a terrible romantic film because so many bad things that happen--"Plumpy" getting hit on by the President, Emma Thompson getting cheated on, etc.  But the movie would have been completely trite if everything worked out for everyone.  People die, relationships sour, and nice girls like Laura Linney don't always get to fuck the hot guy who digs them.  I think the strongest scene in the entire film is Emma Thompson crying in her bedroom while Joni Mitchell plays in the background, before sucking it up and heading back out to get her kids to the play.  I used to cry at that scene, though I didn't this time around.  I was also struck this time by the complete lack of reality in Colin Firth's storyline, even though it remains adorable thanks to a) Colin Firth and b) the chubby sister ("Miss Dunkin Donut 2003") who may or may not remind me of Jen.  He and Aurelia don't know each other at all; they're just projecting their fantasies about the other one!  He could have been telling her how he wanted to kill and eat her, for all she knows.  Not really the best basis for a quickie marriage.

...Overall, I think Love Actually might be tied with Holiday Inn as my favorite Christmas movie. Time to track that one down!

Cookery

We've been on a soup kick the past few weeks, now that the weather has gotten colder. It started with a recipe for lentil soup with dandelion greens, finished with fresh lemon juice, that came from the Greek cookbook Kathy Schwab recommended, The Olive and the Caper (the recipes are fabulous, but the layout is just too much; lots of insets, wacky fonts, etc. Also, I don't really need a primer on the Greek gods, or Homer, in order to make tzatziki).  Then I made a split pea soup with ham hocks from a recipe on Skinnytaste, which got a thumbs-up from Sean's dad.  It was so good I ended up making it twice more; some went to our neighbors, Kari and Brady, when they got home from being in Utah for a couple of weeks (they'd previously given us some of the best beef stew I've ever tasted, so I returned their tupperware with my own offering inside) and the third go-round was chiefly to freeze.  After I'd already sauteed the vegetables, though, I realized I was out of chicken stock.  I was literally turning off the stove and trying to decide whether the Krauszer's down the street would be likely to carry stock or if I'd have to go to the store when Kari knocked to ask something.  The awesome thing about having a friendly neighbor?  She responded to my dilemma with one container of stock and a bag of chicken bouillon cubes!  The third batch was also an experiment to see if you could re-use the ham hocks, since it seemed kind of wasteful to chuck them out; doable, I learned, but it doesn't give you the same level of flavor as fresh ones. It's nice of the powers that be to call them "hocks," by the way, instead of saying "now flavor your broth with these severed pig's feet."  That might put people off.

Tonight's effort, however, was much more involved, creamy white bean and chorizo soup from Bon Appetit. It came from the stack of 2007-era magazines Linda had left behind in the closet in the basement, which I've been flipping through before recycling.  It took two hours to make, most of it active time, and more pots, pans, and utensils than I think I've ever used on a food item. I even used the blender with hot liquids inside.  Surreal.  I told Sean afterward that I had forgotten that Bon Appetit is not really designed for the J.V. cook, but I realized that that's not even really true; there weren't any special techniques required, just a lot of time management and following precise instructions.  The result, I'm happy to say, was fucking awesome, and since there was fresh rosemary and thyme in the pot, the house smelled delicious to boot. I'll be making a freezer batch on Friday, since I have enough left of everything.

The only real snafu tonight was discovering that I'd bought Spanish smoked chorizo,--the only kind I knew existed--while the recipe called for fresh, aka Mexican chorizo, that's in sausage link casings and which can be ground up easily. Slicing up slippery medallions of smoked chorizo into little bits? Actually really difficult, even with our knives newly resharpened courtesy of Gary (I learned on Top Chef that a knife's true test is whether it can easily slice through a sheet of printer paper...now ours finally can).

In a nice bit of serendipity, I started reading Provence, 1970 tonight, about a couple of months when Julia Child, James Beard, and a whole raft of American food luminaries whose names I'd never heard were gathered together wining and dining in the south of France.  It's written by one of the participants' great-nephews, who found his great aunt's meticulous diary in addition to studying the archived correspondence of the other figures, and it's really captivating.  It's making me want to try French cooking (except for snails, urchins, oysters, and things in aspic, all of which seem to be playing a big role), or go to Provence, or both.

Side note: While reading I was confused by the phrase pommes mousseline, which, I read below, means mashed potatoes.  But doesn't pomme itself mean apple, ala the Pomme d'Or?  But then how do you get pommes frites? Confusion...Googling...answer: French people call potatoes pommes de terre, "apples of the earth" (which is delightfully poetic), and then typically just shorten it to pommes.  I guess they figure no idiot is going to think you mean mashed apples...

One

I submitted my first fellowship application yesterday, for the Rome Prize!  I'm actually pretty happy with the state of my project proposal right now, which owes a lot to the continuing criticism of my professors.  Dr. West had asked to take a look, and she got back to me Thursday evening with some of the most perceptive criticism in terms of organization and really getting my point across.  It does help to have an outside pair of eyes.  Likewise helpful has been my Philadelphia pen pal, Stuart, this charming British retiree from the UPenn museum I met while doing the Spotlights at the PMA. Just this week he suggested a quote from Pietro Bembo about Titian being in Rome that starts my proposal off with a nice flourish that it was lacking before.  Stuart and his wife are renting a villa in Tivoli in August, and they're determined that I need to be in Rome by then to join them, haha.  (I think they have me in mind as a free tour guide, which for all the help he's given me, I'd be happy to do!)

So, one down, and six or seven more to go.  Rome was one of the "big three", with CASVA and Kress--both of those are due, or need to be shipped out, on the 15th, so I've got two weeks.  After that, I have a month until RSA and Delmas applications (with, hopefully, a final chance to get in touch with Rosand where he would be most useful), and then CAORC in January and the Cini Foundation (again) in February.  E' basta!  Then I can wait around for a few months to be rejected.  Lol.  I've told Sean that if I don't win any fellowships, which is always a good possibility considering the level of competition, I'm getting a new car, and new I mean a used-but-newer-than-1998 car.  That will be my consolation prize to myself!

Anniversary

Today is the seventh anniversary of my mom's death, and despite having discussed this with Sean at least twice in the past week or so, and despite my sister having mentioned it on the phone last night, naturally, today it completely slipped my mind until a few minutes ago in the shower, when I said "Oh!" out loud.  It's surprising, and maybe a little sad in and of itself, to realize that the remembrance of my mom's death no longer directly linked to feelings of sadness or loss.  This isn't new or anything; I've been able to think about it objectively for a long time.  It just still feels a tiny bit like a wrong done to her, that it wasn't uppermost in my mind this morning.  (Let's not even mention my poor grandpa, whose death date I had to put in my Google calendar because I'm so incapable of remembering it).

So here I'll raise the proverbial glass in my mom's memory.  (Well, a cup of tea, like the one I enjoyed outside in the sun before my shower, would be most fitting.  I think she'd have made fun of me for finally having come around to drinking massive amounts of tea like her, even though I still find the prospect of adding milk to be gross).  A metaphorical cup of Lipton, then, in honor of Joan DiMarzo: tiny spitfire, baker of breads, giver of insanely tight hugs. Not the sweetest mom in the world, nor the most outgoing, but mine, and very much missed.

Viva La Chocolate

My poor LG Chocolate phone has been battered and beaten over its years of service.  The screen was so scratched it was often difficult to read in sunlight, and the name no longer read "Verizon" but "Veri on".  Charging it had turned into a sort of Olympics of frustration, since the charging port no longer read the charger unless positioned in the exact correct spot.  Walking too heavily near the phone could then upset the gentle balance.

It was getting pretty ridiculous, so I decided it was time for a new phone, my first since oh, 2007.  Except for one problem: I don't like smartphones.  They're overpriced, the data packages are ridiculous, and seeing people everywhere--particularly in social situations--with their faces glued to these little screens turns me off of them even more.  Yes, I'm perfectly aware, as each iPhone or Android devotee seems to feel necessary to inform me, of how useful they can be, and all the wonderful apps you can have, and how you just don't know how you got along without one before! Bully for you.  I spend enough time already on the internet and on Facebook--I really don't need to be carrying a computer in my pocket, too.

So a smartphone was kind of out of the question, which leaves "basic phones."  The options Verizon could offer not only were badly reviewed for quality, but would actually cost me money--and given that I haven't used their 'free upgrades' in the five years I've been eligible, I found it ridiculous to have to pay $60 for a crappy phone, when I could theoretically obtain a smartphone from them for free.

Happily, I found a solution, and am now the proud owner of a new....LG Chocolate!  Well, when I say 'new', I mean 'refurbished from a cell phone store online'. At any rate, $30 later, I have the phone I like, restored to near-pristine condition--it charges like a dream.  Even if I will one day have to upgrade to a smartphone, I bet I've pushed that date off by, oh, another five years or so.  See you in 2018, Verizon.

Omnia Mutantur

A few hours ago I pointed out to Sean with a laugh how absurd the sentence I'd just said would have sounded to us just a few months ago. "Want to go hit some tennis balls before I go to meditation practice?" Add in the fact that Sean went with me to yoga this morning and whoa.  Who are these people?  We were just talking the other day about the year during which I worked for Paul and he taught at Xavier, how we were always bored on the weekends but could never agree on joint activities.  Times have changed!

I've been going to meditation for about a month now on Monday nights.  We meet in Dwight Chapel on Yale's old campus; it's no longer in service as a chapel, but it's still kind of incongruous practicing Buddhist meditation, and listening to the dharma talk afterward, under the gaze of a giant stained-glass Christ in the altar wall's windows.  It's definitely challenging to sit for 30 minutes, but I'm enjoying it--and surprisingly enough, enjoying the dharma talks too. Last week there was a guest, a monk from Laos who was very nice but unfortunately spoke terrible English.  Still, one thing he said impressed me.  He said that unlike other religions, Buddhism doesn't expect blind faith to precede wisdom; in effect, the Buddha encouraged people to try his product and see if it worked (ie, reduced suffering) before believing.  It certainly makes one feel more comfortable dipping a toe in.

I've also been going to yoga for the same amount of time; it's likewise really challenging, but I like it!  Today we went because there was a $5 community flow, and I figured it was better to try Sean on yoga on a day when it didn't cost us $17.  I can smugly say that I am way more flexible than him (which feels good considering how much more in shape he is in pretty much every other way). However, I definitely preferred the woman who teaches the Friday class, Christina.  It's a lot tougher, not to mention hotter--apparently that studio can be cool as long as someone gets there far enough in advance to prop open both doors.  Christina only walks in five minutes before our class, so I guess I'll be dripping for the foreseeable future.  Unfortunately, she only does the one class in New Haven, and otherwise only teaches up in Southington, which is way too far for me.  I might go to another class this week, since I'll miss her class on Friday because we're off to Cape Cod for McTague's wedding.

Finally, Sean and I took our first tennis lesson together last week!  That was my birthday gift to him, but he enjoyed it so much that he decided we should use the money Linda gave him for a golf lesson to have two more.  Sean has played before; he and his friends were all basically self-taught players in high school, whereas I had only picked up a racket once before.  I didn't suck as much as I'd thought, which was nice.  I mean, we pretty much learned the proper stance and practiced serving (which reminds me, he gave me an exercise to do involving tossing a washcloth which I haven't done...hmmm).  That's what we were practicing tonight for a quick half-hour before I headed downtown and Sean jogged home.  As it happens, the instructor graduated Notre Dame a year ahead of Sean, and knew his dad--we really do live in a small town!

I suppose to cap off this recent trend of healthy living I should take up trying to jog again.  The gym is closed for renovation this week, and it's not that hot out, so I don't really have many excuses.  Blargh.

Ah, Filth

It's fun to be reminded that people in the past were just as dirty-minded and sex-crazed as we are today.  They had fewer ways of publicizing and sharing their fascination, of course, but every technological advancement just made it easier. The dawn of printing (followed quickly by the invention of the woodcut, engaving, etc) in the West in the 15th century, like the invention of the photograph and then the videotape in centuries to come, offered totally new ways to create, duplicate, and circulate pornography.  One of the best Renaissance examples of this is I Modi, a 1520s erotic book that featured explicit engravings showing sexual positions (modi, or 'ways').

I Modi has a fantastic pedigree all around.  The designer of the engravings was Giulio Romano, Raphael's most successful pupil; the publisher (who was jailed for publishing the book in papal Rome) was Marcantonio Raimondi, who not only collaborated with Raphael but who is also famous for having been involved in the world first art-copyright lawsuit, brought against him in Venice by Albrecht Durer, whose prints Raimondi had been knocking off; and the second edition featured filthy sonnets penned by Pietro Aretino, "scourge of princes" and friend to Titian. 

I've encountered I Modi before in Bette Talvacchia's excellent book, but I'd never really sat down and read through some of the poems like I did yesterday.  They are so fucking filthy it's hilarious.  I can't believe that Aretino wrote works on theology, too, when he has one male character refusing to engage in anal sex with his demanding female partner because "I don't do that, that's just for priests."  In another sonnet, though, these lines appear: "e s'in potta ti spiace, muta loco/ c'uomo non e' chi non e' bugerone" which translates to "and if you don't like it in your pussy, change places; there's not a man alive who isn't a buggerer."  Haha. 

This morning we went for an appointment with Rose, this tiny Sicilian woman who does tailoring, to have my dresses and Sean's suit altered for wedding season.  She had an old black Singer that reminded me a lot of my grandmother's machine, which she bought from the sweatshop where she and all her sisters worked when it was closing down.  It was so powerful, she could whip up a dress for my doll in about five seconds flat--and she also had the scars on her fingers from where the needle had gone right through.  My grandfather designed this super-cool desk--the sewing machine could actually be folded down underneath so it would just look like a regular desk.  I don't know what happened to that, after she died. She made lots of dresses for us when we were children, beautiful ones with sashes, even though she was overly fond of puffed sleeves.

 I'm always really impressed with people who can make things with their hands.  I was in Brooklyn this past weekend and was reminded of my awe of Sara's abilities in this vein--I remember going to her house one day in high school and her showing me this blue skirt (with a swoop of some other, shiny fabric on one side) that she had sewn, and being so impressed that she had just made it, with no pattern or anything.  Once upon a time I was decently capable of using my mom's sewing machine--Jen and I were actually forced to take lessons on Saturdays from a woman in Pocquonock, back when we were in 4-H.  When I was 10ish I sewed a skirt and top for myself (though my mom had to do the buttonhole, which was beyond me) in which I participated in a 4-H "fashion show"--God, the fabric was rainbow tie-dye.  After that period, though, I mostly shunned the sewing machine, and I definitely remember disdaining the clothes my mom sometimes made for us, since 'cool kids' did not have homemade clothes.  Today I wouldn't know the first thing about how to operate one.

Seeing Heather's place, where she has dozens upon dozens of plants arranged in storage-tub planters along her driveway and in the backyard (all kinds of plants, her Meyer lemon, passionfruit, mint, bamboo), also reminded me of another kind of hands-on knowledge that I don't have.  She was showing me how some plants grow best in straw, and these ones are forest-floor plants so she has a covering of dry leaves in their bins, and  I'm thinking that the most research I did for our little garden patch was an Amazon search for "organic bug spray" once something started nibbling our basil!

That said, I am proud that I've been making more of my own stuff household-wise.  Some of it is super-basic, like Sean making his own peanut butter, but my hummus delights me because a) I can add super amounts of fresh garlic and b) it is crazily cheaper than what they sell in the store.  I think they want 5.99 for a small container of Sabra at Stop-and-Shop.  The most expensive ingredient is the tahini, which is $8 a jar but which I can use for 6 batches; lemon juice lasts forever, and chickpeas are cheap.  I bet each batch costs me maybe $2, takes a whole 10 minutes to make, and produces twice as much as a store container.

I was inspired by some delicious blackberry peach ice pops we had at the Brooklyn Flea on Saturday to make my own--I had picked up a Jelly-Belly branded popsicle set a few months ago.  I liked the result (Sean would have preferred a bit of added sugar) but it wasn't quite as "meaty" as the one in New York--I suspect they didn't puree the peaches as much as I did.  Yesterday I also experimented with making a chia seed pudding--we've had the chia seeds sitting on the fridge for months, courtesy of Sean's aunt, and his cousin mentioned that they'll turn pudding-y if you soak them, so I soaked them in milk, threw in some berries and Truvia, and this morning it was indeed like tapioca!  Sean wants to give up yogurt as part of his regular lunch, since the basic kind is pumped up with sugar, the low-cal with aspartame, and he hates Greek.  I'm hoping this can be an alternative.  I even have a small jam jar saved that he could use to take it to school for lunch!

Sean also made our first homemade loaf in bread in months the other day.  We stopped buying bread altogether when he was on the dysglycemic diet, but we'd stopped making our own before that because it was just too tempting, for carb-lovers like us, to have delicious homemade bread sitting around all the time, mocking you from inside the breadbox.  Now that he's doing Weight Watchers, he can have sandwich bread again, but we're back to the same problem--do we make our own bread, which is healthier, since it doesn't have all the crap Arnold's has in it (I read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food last week, in which he suggested avoided foods that have more than five ingredients, or any that are unpronounceable; I think it's a good sign that we have so few processed foods left in our regular diets, but bread definitely falls in this category.  So too, sadly, do things like veggie burgers, which are full of all sorts of weird stuff) but possibly then eat more of it?  Ironically, this loaf turned out misshapen and dense--which was another problem we were having with the machine--so it hasn't been that tempting, after all, but not that successful as sandwich bread, either.

Cleaning products are another area where I've been using a lot of homemade stuff (I even have my own brand name, "Puff's Own"! Haha. Carla for some reason used to call me 'Muff' in college, and told Sean he wasn't allowed to use it, so he adopted 'Puff' instead).  It definitely saves money, though it's been hit or miss in the effectiveness department.  I read a book called Green Clean which had some truly frightening things to say about what's in our regular cleaners, plus lots of useful recipes for homemade versions.  The all-purpose cleaner works pretty well, though I think the vinegar-based one would work better--Sean hated the smell, unfortunately.  Laundry soap has been OK, though we both wish there was a way to make it scented--it's hard to adjust to having no smell at all, when we've been taught to associate certain smells with "clean".  Same goes for the floor cleaner--I fucking love the smell of Pine Sol, chemical though it may be, and adding a few drops of lemon essence to the homemade version does not do the trick.  Making detergent for the dishwasher was a total bust, though I liked the suggestion of running an empty wash once a month with vinegar to clean it out.  Another fail was air freshener, the recipe for which was water, a bit of vodka, and essence--it smelled great, but it didn't actually last or, you know, freshen anything!

One place where it seems chemical cleaners are a must?  Our brand new bathtub, which gets alarmingly gross and dirty but can't be scrubbed with anything abrasive because of what it's made of.  I was using my all-purpose cleaner, but it was definitely not doing the trick, especially on the caulk, which was already getting a sort of pinkish mold.  Luckily, we had to have the window recaulked, and the guy who came recaulked the whole tub and told me a) we need to not let water sit on it, so now one of us just quickly wipes it down after we're done showering, and b) we need to use Clorox Cleaner with Bleach.  What do you know, it cut through the tub grime like nobody's business--and I only realized how dirty it had been once I used that.  I would never really recommend Bathfitters for this reason--no bathtub of mine has ever accumulated muck quite like this, and being bright white doesn't help. On the plus side, it looks super nice, and it is a damned sight better than the peeling, pink monstrosity that was in there before.

Making things, even in my limited way, makes me feel good--even though I feel like a ridiculous failure in other areas of my life, hey, I can make my own hummus, right? Right? Mm.

Follow-up

The Rome trip has definitely taken the laurels for least successful of our trips, but at least it happened--Dr. Cooper's husband broke his arm and required surgery the night before her flight to Venice, so she had to cancel her entire trip. Skipping our trip definitely would have been less stressful, but I'd have missed out on the chance to see Carla, not to mention the good times Sean and I did have at the end.

  Like climbing the dome of Saint Peter's--that was incredible!  Sean wanted to climb the whole way, but luckily for me, by the time we arrived the elevator was the only option. I say lucky because the elevator only takes you to the roof, from which it's an utterly exhausting climb up the interior of the dome itself.  You're in a tiny, cramped spiral staircase, with dozens in front and behind of you, and everyone charging up madly, heaving and panting--eventually you've reached such a point in the curvature of the dome that the space of the stairwell itself sharply slants to one side, and it becomes a really tight squeeze. The woman in front of me actually gave up just shy of reaching the top--she couldn't handle the close quarters.  Once you emerge onto the balcony, on the lantern above the dome, it's worth every butt-burning step, though. All of Rome is spread out in front of you like a blanket: the wedding-cake Vittoriano, the low, inconspicuous dome of the Pantheon, the wide acreage of the Borghese and Doria Pamphilij gardens.

We spent our last afternoon in the latter, the largest green space inside the city.  It's not as atmospheric as the Borghese with its little lake and Asklepeion, and not one really visited by tourists.  In fact, the tourist maps cut off just shy of that area.  So while I knew, generally, from having glanced at a broader map in a book plus having seen the vista from Saint Peter's, where the park was, I didn't actually know where the entrances were!  We left our B&B that morning, picked up some nibbles at the Trionfale market (cherries, fresh rolls, pecorino, and smoked mozzarella) walked past Saint Peter's, and kept on going uphill for 20-30 minutes in the hot sun. Just when I was worrying that I'd added even more unnecessary stress to our trip by getting us lost in some exurb, we found an entrance.  We parked ourselves on a bench to eat our little picnic, and then Sean napped in the sun while I finished up Innocents Abroad (I've been  on a Twain kick since I got back; I read a short biography, a collection of short stories, and I'm working on the Annotated Huck Finn now).  There was a mom with a little boy near us; he must have had an accident, because later he was running around butt naked with a sweater tied around his waist, and I heard his little playmate asking, "where are your pants?"  They were drying on a bush.  It was cute.

A Chilly Roman Holiday

I think it will come as no surprise to Sean or anyone else that I have officially voted this our least successful vacation ever.  I mean, we've had a run of luck with fantastic trips in the past, but this time there were just too many things weighing against us--the stress of Sean's conference, his health issues, my existential career crisis, the thoroughly uninspiring weather conditions, etc. etc.  The first three days of our trip were incredibly unpleasant.  Happily, Sean's paper went well yesterday, and we'll be reunited tomorrow; it's been really weird being in the same European city but not together.  Being with Carla, I can definitely say, has been the high point--we haven't spent this long a stretch of time just the two of us since college! Tonight we're going to the Vatican for a night tour, the first time I've been back inside since 2009.  I'm excited!

A Slow Start to Summer

It seems that monthly posting has become the norm for me, hasn't it?

The past month or so has been rough, as we've worked through the aftermath of Sean's decision to stop taking the anti-depressants.  One of the results has been our new eating plan, based on the Dysglycemia Diet for those with unregulated blood sugar (recommended by Linda's homeopathic doctor).  It's been surprisingly easy to transition away from eating so many grains and into more fruits and vegetables (legumes have been a bit harder to incorporate on a daily basis, unless it's in hummus).  If I went back in time and told myself a couple of years ago or even a few months ago that I'd have given up Cheerios, granola bars, sandwich bread, and pasta...I'm not sure I'd have believed myself.

There was a high note on the exercise front a couple of weekends ago, when Sean and I went to Sleeping Giant and I bravely agreed to take the blue trail, the most difficult and dangerous, all the way up the quarry.
It wasn't like anything I'd ever climbed before; not only was it really fucking steep, on the highest points you're not even on a trail, per se, but rather you're hauling yourself up exposed rock faces at 45 degrees or so.  This isn't my picture (I fear breaking my camera took much to ever bring it), but it gives the idea:

Believe it or not, I actually preferred this kind of climbing to the a steep dirt trail where little rocks are flying out from under your feet; at least you know the cliff face isn't going anywhere!  Real rock climbers would undoubtedly roll their eyes, but for the complete novice it's really exciting to find handholds and footholds and pull/push yourself up!  It showed me how much stronger I've gotten in the past couple of years.  Mind you, I could barely bring myself to look out at the incredible view once we'd made it to the summit.  Or rather, I could look out, but not down.  Jesus Christ.  We passed some people who were headed down that way, and I couldn't figure out how you'd possibly shimmy down those rocks.  I sure as hell couldn't.  That I did the blue trail in spite of my enduring fear of heights made me prouder of myself, but don't they say that exposure to your fear should lessen them?? Because that has not been my experience.

The lower note in exercise terms has been my continued struggle to do the Couch to 5k program.  As I've learned, you can't skip even two days of jogging without seeing your stamina plunge, which is so ridiculous!  Sean told me this like it was obvious, and I'm like, wait, you mean even if I do make it to being able to run 30 minutes, I'll have to keep doing it every other day for the rest of my LIFE to keep it up?  Ugh.  I'm still doing it, though I have yet to complete the last run of week 6, which is a full 25 minutes. This morning I set my alarm, got up and ran at 7am (not the nicest weather; the combination of humidity and low temp, plus the dark clouds over the water, reminded me unpleasantly of my Venice runs).  I'm going to try this and see if I have more energy running in the morning than in the evening--even though jogging through Lighthouse Park and looking at the sun set over Long Island Sound is so beautiful.

When I started the program I had the rough idea that I'd be in shape enough to go running with Carla when we got to Rome, at least a little bit...I'm not so sure anymore, though I plan to go jogging on my own.  It's not every day you can jog across the Tiber and through St. Peter's Square!

Hamlet

A couple of weeks ago we went to see Hamlet at Yale Rep courtesy of Sean's friend Shane, who works there and gave us the tickets. The title role was played by Paul Giamatti, and I (like many other people, including apparently actors originally approached to co-star) had initially been dismissive of the idea that a jowly, paunchy, middle-aged man was appropriate to play a character who is still in university when we meet him.  I was delighted to be wrong, because Giamatti was excellent in the role.  I was still leery during his first appearance in Act I, but I think that's because you meet Hamlet as such an emo whiner, sniffling about his mom's remarriage, that he's not instantly a winning character--you don't care about his angst just yet.  The angst is to come, of course, but what really surprised me was how much humor lies within the play, not only in Hamlet himself, but also, for example, in Polonius (the second-best performance, by the guy who played Uncle Fred in Home Alone), who I have always found pendantic and boring both on the page and the screen. During intermission I ran into Richard Regan, my Shakespeare professor from Fairfield, who did not remember me. He did give me a stern look when I admitted surprise at the amount of humor, and say "Well, it is a very funny play.  You just have to know how to mine it."  Eep.

This was my first time seeing the play on stage, though I've seen various film versions.  Sean had never even read it, so it was all new to him.  He pointed out that although we all know that we owe so many of our turns of phrase to Shakespeare's invention, it's still really incredible to realize just how many are packed into a soliloquy like "To be or not to be", which seems to contain at least one well-used phrase per line, if not more.  For my part, I was surprised during that speech to hear the phrase "to sleep, perchance to dream" spoken not in the gentle lull we often hear it in modern usage, but with a clear note of dread, the fear of the unknown waiting beyond this life.  It was another impressive reminder of how different the act of reading a play is from the experience of watching others interpret those lines before your eyes.

Sean told me just this morning that the NYTimes gave a pretty lukewarm review to the whole production, with the exception of Polonius.  Apparently they couldn't get past the clear lack of age gap between Hamlet and his parents. I would have agreed with them last month, but now I just think, where's the suspension of disbelief? Plus, if Hamlet was first enacted in 1602 (they're really not sure, apparently), the star, Richard Burbage, would have been 35 years old.  Not quite Giammati's age, but no spring chicken, either.

Philadelphia, Revisited (Frequently)

This academic year I've been doing monthly Gallery Spotlights at the PMA.  Each month's spotlight focuses on a single object in the collection.  So far I've done a 15th-century terra cotta portrait head, a Florentine relief plaque of the Madonna and Child, a Resurrection of Lazarus Panel by Palma Vecchio, and a mysterious portrait by Titian. The Spotlights are envisioned as 'conversations' rather than lectures, and it's fascinating how the conversation is never the same from one day to another (since I do Spotlights on the same object three days in a row each month).  Part of this is due to the composition of the groups; Thursdays sees a lot of people who are themselves museum guides, while Friday has a big group of retirees who have all been attending together for years. Saturday doesn't have its own standard following (unless you count Phyllis and her friend Luanna!), so it's something of a grab bag.

I've been pleasantly surprised at the level of enthusiasm and the response to the individual objects.  For example, I've always been impressed by the physiognomic accuracy of the terra cotta head and its sense of psychological presence, so I was taken aback to hear from many people, including Phyllis, that they'd never given it a second glance before. Gratifyingly, they were telling me this to frame their new-found appreciation after the Spotlight!  I was especially pleased that a number of the guides reported later that they had added the piece to their tours with great success.  In the case of the Palma Vecchio, I was surprised in a different way, by the audience's interest in something that I had found pretty unimpressive.  I'd been worried that there wouldn't be a vibrant conversation at all, and yet one day we got caught up talking about techniques of Venetian oil painting, and another about Christian liturgical practices. The people who attend are there because they're really interested in talking about art, even if they have little background in it.  That level of attention plus the mature age of most of the participants, which adds a greater element of life experiences to the mix, provides a nice change from the classroom experience.  The people are all really friendly and interesting to talk to, as well.  Actually, yesterday I received a really nice compliment from one of the women; she told me she wished I had a clone, since she'd been hoping to set me up with her son but had realized I was married!

The Spotlights have also given me a good link to Philadelphia this past year.  Last semester Amy awesomely let me use her apartment in Center City, but this semester I'm shacking up in Chez Phyllis. I don't ever miss Philadelphia when I'm in New Haven (I've noticed that I always think I'm going to be really mournful about these kinds of changes--leaving Shelton, leaving Philly--and then I adjust really quickly), but being here has been really wonderful.  It's just all so comfortable and familiar--I did spend four years here, after all. I love Phyllis' house, its space, its profusion of exotic stuff, all of it with interesting tales attached, like the frieze-like fragment of a Hindu painting framed in her office, which she rescued from the trash at her almost-fiance Ravi's family home in India.  New things have appeared in my absence, including an upright piano in the dining room (I don't think she plays, so I need to ask her about this tonight), and a new kitty, Echo, who is a black Abyssinian.

It's only a little bit strange to be here as guest, rather than resident.  It's great not to have to wonder where the spoons or extra towels are, but I've been really thrown off by being in the spare bedroom on the second floor, it all just sounds different somehow, to the extent that I can't distinguish someone coming up the stairs vs someone coming down from the 3rd floor.  That someone would be Laura, of course, my youthful replacement, who is very nice, but definitely quiet, and not always certain of how to interact with Phyllis, I think.  We all went out to dinner together last night to Bacio, a perennial favorite, and as we were leaving Phyllis, true to form, wound up getting into a 15-minute conversation with the chef as Laura and I stood by the door.  I told her how on my first visit to that restaurant with Phyllis, she (politely, but opinionated-ly) schooled the chef on how they might improve their meatballs by following her mother's approach of soaking the bread in milk, while I just stood there semi-awkwardly. Hopefully Laura realizes how awesome Phyllis is, though.  She had left yet another present for me on the spare room bed when I arrived, and I had to laugh, because while most of Phyllis' gifts to me have been great (several of the nicest shirts I own, and which I typically wear on Spotlights, came from her), she also often tries to give me her clothes, which are a little too mature in style for me just yet.  This gift was a chocolate turtleneck sweater from Lord and Taylor, and it was lovely--but she'd also added a little silk scarf of the same kind she often wears, which made me laugh. Not yet, Phyllis!

Holiday Cheer

I started writing "It's been more than two months since my last post" before I went and checked my last entry, which turned out to start with the exact same line!  Yes, it's been quite a dry semester for blog posts, for the same reasons mentioned before--anxiety over my proposal.  However, "Titian and the Culture of Mid-century Rome: A Venetian Among the Ruins" is currently in the hands of Dr. Cooper, who says she likes what she's read so far, though she hasn't actually returned it yet.

The holidays are in full swing in our house!  Behold our lovely tree, which I ferried home from the tree lot atop the noble Corolla:

Sean's childhood stocking is MIA, so yesterday I made him one.  You know what love is?  Love is standing in line at Walmart during holiday shopping season to purchase a $2.97 set of variously colored glitters and nothing else.

Last night I tried my hand at making anginettes for the first time, with good results!  Hubbard declared them better than her own (granted, she hasn't made them in years and also is of unreliable memory), and Sean generously said they were almost as good as his but excellent for a first effort.  *eye roll*  Speaking of first effort, I just pulled my test-batch of homemade dog treats out of the oven.  It seems I left them in a shade too long, they've begun to darken on the underside, but luckily dog treats are supposed to be crunchy.  Now I'll let them cool and then slip some to Lulu on the sly to see if she likes them.  Hopefully it's a good recipe, because it's super easy and I'm planning to give these to everyone we know who has a dog: Linda, Michelle, Daniel, Danny G, Dana's daughter Morgan.

...Seriously I am becoming such a housewife.  I actually googled "how to make your own all-purpose cleaner" a little while ago. I regret nothing.

Lacuna

Wow, nearly two months since my last post.  That's quite a long time, though I'm not sure if it's the longest gap in the decade I've kept this blog.  Hm, that's a project for a rainy day...

For much of the past two months there hasn't been a great deal to tell.  I came back from Venice without a dissertation proposal to hand, which was really disappointing, and my early enthusiasm about doing research in Yale's art library waned quickly.  I hate working there; it's cold, ugly, and the chairs are uncomfortable and too low relative to the tables. My affiliate ID won't get me in the door, so I have to have a guard call in for a librarian to come walk me in like a toddler--which I have to repeat if I want to leave for lunch or to get a tea refill.  There's not really much of an alternative to working there, though, since you can take out only ONE book at a time, for ONE day, no renewals. Lovely.

Unhappiness with my surroundings bled into my general discouragement over not being able to develop any kind of promising topic. Titian has been so thoroughly treated by passels of art historians that I kept coming back to the dreary thought of "what is there to say that hasn't been said a thousand times already, and probably in at least three languages?"  That led into equally discouraging thoughts of "why am I even doing this?  Do I actually want to spend my life with this?" which led to further harrowing thoughts of "but what else would I want to do?" And it went from there, until I gave up even bothering to go the library, until I developed a Pavlovian-style negative response to the mere mention of the words "Titian" or "dissertation." (Sean had quite a bit of fun springing those words on me until I had to ask him to stop).  There was a period of a few weeks in late August where my spirits were at the lowest they've probably ever been in my life.  My first brush with depression. Whoo.

Then a very good thing happened!  At the end of August, I was contacted by Marice Rose from Fairfield, who needed a last-minute sub for an intro art history course. That was exactly the kind of invigoration I needed. I hadn't been in front of a class for a year, and I really did miss it.  I like teaching, I really do--it's the research, which is the Holy Grail to people like Dr. Cooper, that I care less about.  So within a whirlwind span of time I found myself with a Faculty Stagcard to add to my collection of IDs.  My class is small, just 25 students, and we're in the brand-new museum classroom, not the old rooms of Canisius where Eliasoph provided me with my first introduction to art history nine years ago.  In general, my students are of a higher caliber than those I've taught at Temple, but really not by as much as I might have expected (there is a disturbingly widespread lack of understanding of the function of an apostrophe, for example).  Our museum trip is this weekend, actually, and since Fairfield doesn't let you require the trip the way Temple does, I'll be taking just half the class (side benefit: only having to give one tour).

Teaching didn't help my progress proposal-wise, of course, so much as it gave me a good excuse to do other things.  So too with practicing French and German, and teaching myself Latin at a pace that could be bested by a glacier.  I also started jogging--at last, something I could trump a glacier in, even if not by much.   Then there's the housewifery; Sean has a very full schedule with school, and I do not, so it makes sense for that to be my responsibility, but it definitely takes more time and energy than I was expecting. I really don't mind it, and indeed, it frequently offered a perfect excuse.  "Oh, I could work on my proposal, but you know, no one's ever gone around and wiped down all the cabinets and door frames in here. Yeah, better take care of that."

This is not to say that there wasn't plenty of guilt and shame involved in this avoidance.  I've invested no small part of my self-identity in the role of "graduate student, future PhD and professor," and the thought that maybe I couldn't make it, that maybe I'm not cut out for academia after all and it's just taken up until this last great hurdle to reveal it, was really frightening.  But for the first time, I'm facing something that I can't just buck up and make myself DO, like I did with the once-terrifying specter of exams.  You can't just make a list and start hammering away at it, when the only item on your list is "figure out awesome dissertation topic that will win you grants." And it doesn't help, of course, that so many of my friends have proved amazing in this regard--Jasmine and Erin with their Kress grants, my friend Laura who's on a fellowship at the Smithsonian this year, Amy off in Rome. I felt like I was falling behind, failing expectations, and that was really miserable.

It didn't help that Dr. Cooper and I have been virtually incommunicado.  There was a period of like a month in which she didn't really respond to my emails and shrugged off my request for a Skype date with a question about when I'd be in Princeton next.  (Sometimes I think she really doesn't get that there's 200 miles between CT and Philadelphia; she even tried to get me to sit in on her class every Wednesday!)  I decided that this lack of radio contact clearly meant she hated me now for not immediately having a great topic (yes, so dramatic).  I wasn't able to meet with her until this past week, when I was in Philly to shadow the education director at the PMA on one of the talks I'll be doing next week.  And you know what?  She wasn't upset at all.  We had an amazing, nearly three-hour conversation about all manner of things, not just art history, that reminded me why I enjoy her company as both a person and as a professor.  We also talked about the germ of an idea that might have more promise than what I was thinking about before; at the very least it definitely piqued my interest much more than anything has recently.  I left campus somehow relaxed and energized, which was a wonderful contradiction. Things are looking up a tiny bit, at any rate, and that's certainly something to be thankful for.

Reading

Between the Cape trip and just generally avoiding what I should be doing since I got back, I've done a lot of reading.  I finished up Anna Karenina shortly after I got home, and afterward decided to go all the way with Tolstoy and read War and Peace. (Never fear, to counter this level of erudition I also re-read the vulgar and hilarious Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove).  Anna Karenina was a re-read, too; I couldn't remember when, but thanks to the helpful search function on this blog, it turns out I've had a number of past associations with it that I've mostly forgotten.

To start with, in July of 2002 I mentioned it in an entry about re-organizing my books; it and Dostoyevsky fell into the category of  books that "I started and gave up on because the foreign names got annoying."  Clearly I didn't have much of an idea of the book's plot, since I made this brief entry in June of 2003: "Did anyone else know that Anna Karenina throws herself in front of a train at end end? I didn't, but today alone I have seen no less than three references to that, in the newspaper, in The Hours, which I am currently reading, and in Maxim of all places. I have two copies of that book and I've never made it past page one hundred. Someday." (I was reading The Hours?  I must either have not finished it or forgotten it.)  I did have two copies of the book until recently.  One I acquired, like so many of my books, at some tag sale, and the other from the bookshelf of odds and ends that was in the little landing on the basement steps in my grandfather's house.  At some point I forced myself to shed one copy (other doubles included Voltaire's Candide, who had to go; Pride and Prejudice, both of which got to stay; and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, of which I bought a softcover copy in the Shelton library booksale as a reserve, to lend out to friends, and of which I also now own an Italian-language version), and kept the one from Norwood because the cover art was prettier.  When I got home from Venice (where I'd been reading on my computer) and unearthed the paper version from the basement bookshelf here, where it had been relegated as not deserving of sufficient interest to go in the hallway bookcase upstairs that I commandeered for my books, I discovered that the copy had belonged to my aunt Janice.  I think I meant to mention it to her at the Cape and forgot; I wonder if she'd remember it all all?  She's not the literary type. 

It turns out that I only managed to read the book all the way through in my freshman year--February 2004 to be exact.  Although I was on the whole impressed with the book, I got hung up on my distaste for the title character: "it's an awful thing to say, but by the end of the book i really hated anna. i knew beforehand what her fate was to be and by the last fifty pages i was just thinking "oh my god, stop being a tearful whiny bitch and throw yourself under the train already!"     You know what else is awful?  Seven and a half years later and my opinion didn't change at all--I was still ready for her to commit suicide way before she actually does.  I also found myself bored, once again, by Tolstoy's philosophizing about the nature of workers to the land, the function of religion, etc. etc., but I think what I did recognize on this second reading is that despite the title, Anna and her tormented relationships with Karenin and Vronsky only make up 1/3 of the book's narrative, and arguably not even the most central part; that distinction goes, I think, to Kitty and Levin, while the other third is filled in by Anna's brother, the philandering Oblonsky, and his silly wife Dolly.  (I'm not sure why Tolstoy give Anna's name as the title, when it seems obvious that the thrust of his effort, and his approbation, lies behind Kitty and Levin).  Oblonsky and Dolly appear as a sort of mirror to Anna/Karenin/Vronsky--brother and sister are both adulterers, he repeatedly and shallowly, she once and out of passion, but where undeservedly good things come to Oblonsky at the end, there's only suffering for Anna. 

War and Peace had nothing so concrete a narrative structure. Lumpy is an adjective I would apply to it.  There's a vast array of interconnected characters, and the point-of-view jumps around between them.  I was impressed by his ability, particularly in the beginning, to portray how  Russian society worked in the drawing-room and--more surprisingly--how women behave when there aren't any men around, as when two lovely women help their dumpy but rich friend pretty herself up after the arrival of a suitor: "Both women exerted themselves with perfect sincerity to make her look well. She was so plain that the idea of rivalry with her could never have entered their heads. Consequently it was with perfect sincerity, in the naïve and unhesitating conviction women have that dress can make a face handsome, that they set to work to attire her."  When I read that, I understood and recognized that sense of girl-on-girl competition instinctively, I could imagine it happening today as long as you substituted "crush" for the idea of a suitor.

Unfortunately not all of the novel is so interesting.  Huge, dull portions of the book depict life at the front during the Napoleonic wars, and toward the end of the book I just started skipping those entirely. There was one perceptive description of group psychology, the adoration that the officers feel for the figure of the Emperor, particularly young Rostov, who has only glimpsed him: "And Rostov got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming of what happiness it would be to die- not in saving the Emperor's life (he did not even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before his eyes. He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the Russian arms and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the only man to experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding the battle of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the Russian army were then in love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the glory of the Russian arms."  Sean just told me the other day that when the US first went to war in Afghanistan, for a brief moment he did think of war in glorious terms, and even hoped that this would prove to be "our" World War II.  It was amazing to me because that never occurred to me even though I supported the invasion, and he pointed out that, duh, it's probably because I'm a girl and less conditioned to think in those terms. 

Overall, the problem I had with War and Peace is the same one I had with Anna Karenina, but even more pronounced.  For me the best kind of novel is one in which you feel the author has created real people--even if it's not set in your own time and place, and you need a lot of contextualizing to understand the constraints under which the characters operate (for example, the rules of propriety in Jane Austen's England), you should still be able to understand them, recognize them, as people, instead of two-dimensional mouths into which unconnected and unfelt words are placed by the author. Sometimes this can be the fault of the 'telling, not showing' fallacy. Anna, for example, is constantly referred to, by both men and women, as beautiful, entrancing, amazing, (insert more superlatives), and yet I never really understand why others are so drawn to her. She only becomes real to me, in her motivations, her actions, her speech, at the end, when she's terribly jealous of Vronsky's imagined lover--she acts out these passive-aggressive scenes that you could see in a contemporary novel or film. And is it a Russian thing, how everyone in his books is either ecstatically happy or terribly depressed? People are always bursting into tears, or running off in a fury, or being thrown into despair on account of a look intercepted across a busy drawing room.

I have a similar issue with Virginia Woolf, whose To the Lighthouse I attempted to re-read today. Her stream-of-consciousness writing aside, I couldn't handle the merry-go-round of super-intense emotions that her characters enter and exit so rapidly--one minute, Mrs. Ramsay is looking at her husband and thinking ecstatically (and for no reason) that she's not even fit to tie his sandal (my high-school self put indignant exclamation points next to this statement), and then a few pages later is thinking, again for basically no reason, that she absolutely can't stand him at all. Adoration and irritation, good humor and bad, the characters flip flop with shocking speed. It drove me nuts. That re-read did not end well.