A walk on the river.

The historian and I are planning to walk the length of the Jordan River Parkway over the next few weeks. This was the first section. Actually, it was partly doing a little walk by the L.A. River last spring that made me want to do this--something about an urban/suburban water way, its very presence in the cities and towns in which we live--seems worth knowing more about.

The baking commences.

And you know what that means--the grading has ceased! Last night at about 10:15 p.m., I finished my reading, for better or for worse, of the revisions (or "revisions," in the case of more of my students than I would have liked) and portfolios and final projects and exams. C'est fini, and I feel, frankly, okay about it all. The reckoning was prolonged but it was just.

Therefore and thus, as we speak there is babka a-rising (pictures to come). And the people, there is butter in my refrigerator and it shall not be spared! In fact, more butter than I presently have is called for, and thus there will be store runs for butter and other sundries. Powdered sugar. Maybe some more sprinkles. Cream? Because there will be cookies galore, and more caramels, this time not slightly overcooked, and Christmas breads of various kinds.

One of the three out-of-town children has come home to roost. She is waiting for me to watch another episode of Glee with her. Two more come home tonight. The tree is fresh and it smells good. There are poinsettias. The goose is getting fat, the people. FAT.

A writing teacher's Christmas haiku.

lopsided Christmas
tree, so festive you've made these
last portfolios!

Me and Almost Famous had brunch together at the Oasis, but I still don't have a Christmas tree.

Yesterday, at the Oasis, I saw Patrick Fugit. I had to put on my glasses to double check. I said to my companion Kati, "I'm not sure, but I think that's Patrick Fugit!"

She put on her glasses and said, "That is Patrick Fugit!"

Now, Patrick Fugit and I go way back. He plays, basically, the doppelganger of Cameron Crowe in Almost Famous, a movie I love because it's basically about my life, if I had been a boy and had started writing for Rolling Stone when I was 15. But Cameron Crowe and I are almost the exact same age and really essentially have lived the same life. (if I had become a writer for Rolling Stone and gone on to direct movies such as Almost Famous. A movie I love. I think you can see my point here. CC=LisaB., but for minor differences barely worth pointing out.) Also, Patrick Fugit in Almost Famous looks almost exactly the same as I did in my yearbook picture, junior year. My daughter tells me that I look like Almost Famous, which only makes sense, given all of the above.

Speaking of this daughter: a few months ago, due to the vagaries of luck, fate, etc., she got to go to L.A. and stay at the Chateau Marmont with her niece. I made her promise me that she would text me all her celebrity sightings:

"janice dickinson looking like an old paper bag at the polo lounge at the beverly hills hotel."
"jessica lange checking out next to us!" [me: how'd she look?  daughter: she looked old and beautiful.]
"ryan phillipe and his two kids at fred segal."
"just now we rounded out the trip with mischa barton."
"at the pool with the world's most annoying actor john leguizamo."
"dining across from elizabeth moss. also kevin dillon. both smoking up a storm."

So I think we can all agree that when I spotted Patrick Fugit at the Oasis, I owed my daughter a text. But when I reached for my phone, this text was waiting for me, as if preemptively:

"You have five hours to get a tree before I show up with a fake tree. This is for real."

To which I replied:

"I am at the Oasis and almost famous, aka Patrick Fugit, is here! Take that, Chateau Marmont! (p.s., I am getting a tree for reals tomorrow.)

To which she replied:

"Tomorrow! If you have time to be star struck you have time to get a tree! (Tell him he looks like you as a teenager.)"
Update:

Enough with the not posting.

Here's what I've been doing:

1. getting ready to grade
2. chasing after rainbows, by which I mean the chimerical student with his/her final project(s)/exams in hand, trying to entice him/her to give it up already so I can grade it.
3. grading
4. watching Glee (old episodes) while grading
5. thinking about baking
6. hacking off slices of caramel from the batch I cooked just a wee bit too long
7. contemplating AGAIN the purchase of a Christmas tree which protraction of a joyful event leaches pleasure from it WHY do I do this every year WHY?

But anyway.

Soon my family will descend upon mi casa and that will be fun whether I'm ready for it or not.

Progress report.

Christmas Tree. I will get one. by lisab

My men and my women:

On Sunday, I noted the faintest dust of snow drifting lazily down and asked myself: shall I go out or shall I stay in? and more importantly, shall I bake? As it turned out, I went into the wild world to try to find fancy dresses for granddaughters, and came back sort of wasted. But in the meantime, an idea set my head on fire (sorry, just now watching Glee) and the idea was this: apple turnovers.

Maybe I looked at Tartelette, and there was a recipe for crazy mille feuilles, along with a rough puff pastry recipe, whoa. Maybe it was that there's a bucket of apples in the garage that came from our very own trees.



Maybe it's that every weekend of late, we say "Let's make applesauce!" and then we never do. And maybe, periodically, I need to wrestle with some complicated pastry to prove that pastry is not the boss of me. I don't know.

But that rough pastry recipe called my name. And the context in which it called my name was the turnover.

I have some history with the apple turnover. I think you can still buy those turnover kits made by, what, Pillsbury, in the refrigerator case. Which I have done in the past. In the past, when I was a teenager, I may or may not have made some of these turnovers for a crazy church event where girls brought a picnic something or other and boys bid on the picnics? Can that be real? I think it was, and I'm pretty sure I had some vaguely French-slash-bohemian fantasy that also may or may not have involved some kind of unusual cheese. Okay, closing that memory up for good, and moving on. Where was I? Apple turnover, right.

So, this pastry. After you make the basic dough, all puff pastry requires multiple rollings out, foldings into thirds, rests in the refrigerator, then more rolling out, etc. This is what builds the layers. For classic puff pastry, you make a square of butter and enfold it in the dough, then roll it out, etc. But with rough puff pastry, you incorporate the butter into flour, as if you were making pie crust, add water, gather it into a ball...and then you roll it out, fold, rest, etc. Does this rough version sound easier than the classic? Not really, am I right? Are you even still listening?

Well, let me say that upon the first assemblage, the dough was very rough looking, and I questioned indeed whether it would be puffy at all or whatsoever, or if instead it would be a tough, horrible catastrophe of a dough that would make me sad that I had ever had the apple turnover idea overtake my mind like a fire. But guess what? After the second rolling out, it started to kind of look suave and as if it might contain the possibility of puff.

(but flat, right? can you believe that the above would ever expand into delicate and sophisticated layers? me either, to tell the truth.)

But after the third rolling out, I was all, let's get the apples!

And here's how it all turned out in the end:

Untidy perhaps, but undeniably flaky and delicious. Apple turnovers YES.

In summation.

Me, to the historian, while the television is muted during a commercial break whilst watching The Good Wife: Guess how much work I got done today?

The historian: How much?

Me: Not any.

The historian: [expletive.]

But who's counting.

Still have drafts to read, assignments to grade, comments to bestow, consultations to hold, but today I made waffles for breakfast, which we lingered over; picked up eggs and kale and apples from Chad; browsed Sophia's Christmas fundraiser boutique (for a worthy cause); admired the Spiderman detachable arms (can't possibly explain this) applied to another action figure by Deacon; shopped for Christmas presents for the Scotlands (denied!); and bought delectable assorted groceries and flowers. And talked to the oven repair guy (news: not good). And saw Hugo. Which we loved.

With the Folio reading over with, I feel a small window of not-panicking. All last week my lower back was aching; two nights I could barely sleep; I felt, sometimes, like I was only barely keeping it together. No more. Thursday night I slept the sleep of the blessed. And Friday, even with multiple consultations, a short presentation, a meeting, and appointments to help three students bind books, I felt released. Free.

Obviously, the grading/consulting/commenting regime reimposes itself, like, tomorrow. But I am also going to take a long walk and I am going to remember to breathe the December air. I will cook something delicious, maybe some things. And on Monday I am getting a Christmas tree. The end.

Sometimes, everything is okay.

Like today, for instance.

Knowing that there was a race against the clock, printer-wise, and that while there was a good faith promise to get a printed magazine delivered by 4:30 p.m., there was on the other hand every chance in the world that things could go awry, I was unable to sleep last night, which meant that I was behind, just a little, in all my appointments, etc. today.

Yet after all--after the fouled-up print job and the promises, after the not-enough-sleep and the ten-minutes-behind day--after all this, the book was delivered a half an hour early, it was exquisite, and the reading--the whole event--was just splendid.

Here's what the internet said about it:

And just in case you want to check it out--you can go here to see the whole digital edition, and here to see the pdf of the print edition. If you want yr own book, you can come to my hall at the SLCC to pick it up for yourself. It's a beauty.

(It's possible that I am filled with love for humankind at the moment. Just saying.)

It goes a little something like this.

Today, the issue of Folio arrived from the printers. The student staff and I were kind of excited to see it. Tomorrow is the issue launch and reading, after all. It's possible that we sent an excited inquiry over to Print Services, who is now our middleman. And maybe a phone call, after which our design editor put her coat on and went over to take a look.

"Is there something wrong?" we asked her. She looked concerned.

"Maybe something aesthetic, not content," she said, like a mysterious Zen master of design. And off she went. We went on planning the issue launch slash reading slash web issue unveiling slash multimedia extravaganza (there will be refreshments!).

Fifteen minutes later, Zen Design Master came back. She did not have an air of equanimity. Her face looked a little stormy.

Issue (a). One page was bound in the book upside down.

Issue (b). That page was a repeat of a page about seven pages earlier in the book, where said page was bound right side up.

Issue (c). Page 70 is missing.

What. we said. We said What. The. Hell. We really couldn't believe it. I, Faculty Advisor, had gone through the book before sending it to the printer. The Design Editor had surely gone through the book only about a zillion times. She and the Print Services middleman liaison person went through it together before sending it off. This was not an advisory oversight problem. This was not a layout problem. This was not a middleman liaison person problem. This was a printer problem, one with only a little more than twenty-four hours to turn it around.

The Print Services middleman had what I can only imagine was a terse, perhaps even spiky, conversation with the printers, who are now reprinting the book. Her followup e-mail to me even said something like "as we speak," which I can only hope was literally--and I mean literally literally--true. We agreed to have a less-matte finish than we had originally ordered on the cover (WOE!) and they agreed to have the book to us by 4:30 p.m. Which is precisely 90 minutes before the reading slash issue launch slash multimedia showdown slash web issue extravaganza is supposed to start (there will be tea!).

Meanwhile, I have about 30 photographs, illustrations, drawings, prints and paintings in my office, which will need to be carted over to the venue, along with the putative magazine. Catering will be delivering crackers, cheese, fruit platters and assorted tea bags along with what we hope will be very hot water, to celebrate what may be a phantom book.

But by golly come to the event! It's an issue launch, art and multimedia gallery, web-issue debut, and reading. With refreshments! And hopefully a magazine!

Koans.

Sundance Catalog: why fingerless gloves?

***

Tinychat: what is "please do not spam/flood the chat"?

A couple of dyspeptic memos, with feelings in them.

TO: Student, whom I like quite a bit and who is still in the game at this late point in the semester, so...there's that.

FROM: Professor, easily appalled because of this same late point in the semester.

DATE: Today

RE: What you said about Chekhov

When you said you loved Russian writers but you also thought that writers from this period tended to make small details "unnecessarily long-winded" and that Chekhov was "no exception," I felt a little murderous.

Chekhov was, well, first of all, Chekhov is Chekhov, for heaven's sake. Secondly, sir, he was a Russian writer. The winters in Russia are long. What was there for Chekhov to do but write long, elegant, wintry sentences?

_______

TO: Student, whom I like but who always disagrees with me in every damned online discussion, literally EVERY single one.

FROM: Professor, who's a little tired of this nonsense, at this late point in the semester.

DATE: Today

RE: Your critique of me

Today, when I read your critique of the question I asked in the online discussion, particularly where you told me I should write more clearly and my questions shouldn't have so many parts, I felt annoyed.

My dear, you may be right. But I shall continue to ask my many-parted questions until forever or when I find a simpler way to ask them. You go on thinking every question can be asked in a single, straightforward, uncomplicated clause. You'll probably make piles of money and I will still be a community college professor. But I will have my dignity. And my fat, gnarled questions. And this tiny bit of rancor that I shall cherish, a minuscule needle that I will keep in my satchel of teaching memorabilia.

The sparkly: a love story.

When I was little, the thing I wanted most out of all life was a pair of red shoes. And also to be Mary Poppins, which I think we can all agree is a contradictory set of desires. (Also to be Maria Von Trapp, both before and after she was a nun. Fine, novice.)

Red shoes are, of course, less sensible than a brown or a black shoe, just for the "what will this go with?" factor. So it was right that my shoes be brown or black, or perhaps a sassy navy blue. I'm pretty sure, however, that I remember trading shoes with a girl on the playground, and I'm pretty sure her shoes were red. You can imagine, I'm sure, my mother's bafflement-slash-horror when I came home with some other kid's shoes. But because you just didn't hop in your car for no good reason back in the day, I got to wear those shoes for one glorious night. At least I think I did. Maybe I'm making this all up. Either way a memory/fake memory of borrowed red shoes is a key dimension of my own narrative. I think you can see where I'm going with this.

Point is, colorful is better than not colorful. And better than colorful--better by far!--is the sparkly.

I remember sitting with some lovely women a couple of years ago, and one of them said to the other, "You can't find a sweater without sequins on it," making it clear that the word sequins did not describe a good thing. But I thought, secretly, because I wasn't prepared to out myself yet for the magpie that I was/am/always will be, How piquante et amusante, because I am looking for that very thing: a sequined sweater. A cardigan, to be exact, not just embellished but encrusted with sequins. I was looking not for a restrained sparkle but a full on bedazzlement, a cardigan that, were it hoisted into the heavens, would be capable of guiding ships home from the sea.

Did I find this cardigan? Why, yes I did. It was gray, merino wool, with the whole front covered in tiny little sequins. Did I pay a small fortune for this sweater? Possibly. It turns out that I was ahead of my time, as is true in so many fashiony things.

I have, since the Great Sparkling Cardigan Acquisition of 2009, bought many, many new sparkly things. I talked myself out of rainbow colored sequined ballet flats, and then talked myself back into them when they were on sale. These shoes are absurd and they are glorious. It tickles my soul to see them in my closet, and it makes me feel like a ballerina princess from Shinyland when I wear them. I also have several sequined shirts, and a sequined dress and, recently, I acquired a sequined skirt. It is pink and fantastic. The sequins, they are everywhere, and I am laying in the shiny for the lean years, when I predict everything will be matte and we will all drown in our own gloom.

Most recently, I saw these and gasped:

Reader, I bought them. Obv.

It is better to sparkle than not to sparkle. Words to live by, the people.

In the middle of the middle of the end.

Why does blogging seem like a big question mark, wrapped in briars, right now?

I don't give a damn about the blogging zeitgeist. I have loved this space as a little art gallery, as a place to try things, as a small space to speak. I think I still do love it. I'm sure I still love it, but something is getting in the way.

Is it that the many ways to enter this space--visual, textual--crowd its entrance?

Is it that life itself seems thick with sadnesses, potential and real?

Is it that the marker of my work life, the semester, is at its most crushing point?

Oh, let's focus on the semester. By all means, the semester, with its thicket of grading, its consultations, its many indicators that my optimism may be unwarranted, that I am not, as it were, succeeding in aiding my students toward their achievement of the course outcomes? Is it that school life is filled not with nouns but nominalizations? Is it that the semester's weather has finally settled into its wintry trajectory?

I want and do not want to talk about the many deaths that seem to be accompanying me along my path. They're not my deaths--am I even allowed to talk about them as if they were my own story? The walk alongside a loved one, if briefly, in the valley of the shadow, as it is said--not my story. My own age pressing on me--this is my story, but it is not delightful.

I know I have delightful stories to tell. I live them almost every day. I'm sure I have small amusing anecdotes to tell about the inventive definitions my students are concocting for syntactical terms. Pictures to post. Things to celebrate. I have them. They spill out of my handbag whenever I go looking for my lipstick, and fall out of my pockets with the small change, and trail behind me, an invisible vapor, when I walk from here to there.

I feel like I just had to say this: it has been a long year with much grief, some of which feels very close to me and which I don't have the blog-language to talk about. Maybe I can say it in poems, but only maybe; and if I don't say it here, anything else I do say would feel dishonest to me. So tomorrow, I hope to be able to set this all to the side, at least for the moment, having acknowledged it, and get on with the business of joy, which business I want to choose every day if I can.

Top five favorite things at this very moment.

1. there are two kinds of bread at our house.

2. the movie Take Shelter.

3. that there is a French detective novel waiting for me to read it.

4. that Friday is just a couple of days away.

5. my bed my bed my bed.

(plus the top one: each and every one of my beautiful children is alive and well and on this planet.)

Autumn light.

At home, 4:30 p.m., after a long long long day.

Me, already prone, reading: Will you turn on that light? No, wait.

Historian, with hand on the lamp: Are you sure?

Me: I just want to enjoy that natural light (gestures vaguely at window) for a few minutes longer.

[seven minutes later]

Me: Okay, turn it on.

In other news:

Just let me watch my shows. by lisab

On the other hand, hot cheese.

As of late, I have found myself marching across the quad with purpose round about lunchtime. I have two basic lunch options:

1. the BLT hack, wherein I order the optional bacon (an extra .75) with all the veggies and some pesto mayo, which against all condiment-related odds, tastes fantastic. I fill out the order form, hand it to the sandwich guy, who computes all the little ingredients I have checked off, then says: "No meat? or cheese?" and I say (defying the obvious point that bacon *is* meat, because I know he means "no meat-for-the-regular, i.e. -included-price?"), "No," and then he's all, okay, I will erase the "bacon-for-an-extra-charge" mark you put on your order sheet, and I'm all, thanks dude, and the upshot is that there's a BLT, basically, with chips and a drink for less than $5, take that, Subway! Plus: pesto mayo, who'd a thought, because mayo, the most blighted of all condiments, is unexpectedly enhanced by "pesto," please don't tell me what's really in it.
2. cheese pizza.

This pizza, which I eat on the average of two times a week, is Chef Tom's, and it's foldable, and it's kind of greasy, garlicky, and moreover, it never lets me down. I usually sprinkle it liberally with those red pepper flakes and wolf it down before it gets even lukewarm, because its true essence is only delivered for the two minutes, three minutes tops, that it's piping hot and thereby--and here's a conundrum for you if ever conundrum there was--risking roof-of-mouth burn.

Hot, melted cheese is one of the all-time indicators that human civilization is not just a giant and cynical joke. I refer also to the melted cheese open-faced sandwich, as well as the grilled cheese sandwich. These are no laughing matter, ladies and gentlemen. Rather, they illustrate that the application of heat to food is--and I'm just spit-balling here--as sublime as, say, great literature, maybe not Shakespeare, but Tennyson. Or symphonies. Or Rodin. Can Rodin warm you up on a cold winter's night? or after Writing Center hours, or Discussion Team, or strategic planning? I submit to you that Rodin cannot. But cheese pizza can.

I also submit to you perhaps the apotheosis of hot cheese dishes: Green Chile Quiche. This was a dish that rotated into the family recipe canon later--i.e., I did not grow up eating it, but my mother made it, and now the recipe has a place in my generation. The recipe involves cottage cheese, Monterey Jack cheese, green chiles, eggs, and a little butter and flour to make it meltier and simultaneously bind it together a little bit more. This is a crustless quiche, and thus it can be made in a single bowl and then poured into a lightly greased casserole, baked at 425 for 10 minutes and then 375 for 40 minutes more, give or take.

This quiche, with a side of salad or broccoli or God forgive us corn, will warm your very soul. If you don't think there is such thing as a soul, this quiche, with said sides, will prove the soul's existence. And the people, when there are leftovers for breakfast? this quiche will prove to you that there is an organizing principle in the universe. That there is order, and goodness, nourishment, light, and truth. This, the people, is the power of hot cheese.

happiness.

happiness. by lisab

From Rilke.

" In the end, those who were carried off early no longer need us:

they are weaned from earth's sorrows and joys,

as gently as children outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers.

But we, who do need such great mysteries,

we for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's growth--:

could we exist without them?"

(go with God, John Fritz.)