The Pumpkin King

2009-02-04T18:51:00.000-08:00

Good Food Blog

So I was going to to to the gym and go swimming tonight, I really was. But at 4:50 one of our needier clients called, and kept me on the phone discussing her estate plans until 5:40. They're supposed to come in and sign their wills tomorrow and really just want them to go away at this point, so I thought it best to put in the time tonight.

So I pull into the gym parking lot about 6:00 (and lap swim only lasts until 7:00) still trying to make a go of it and there is literally no parking space to be had. I think they were having some kind of elementary/high school basketball game there because I doubt this many people are into free weights and Pilates, even in Santa Fe. People are parked on the sidewalks and all along the road. At this point I give up and decide to to home and cook dinner. What's in the fridge? Uhhh, we have plenty of egg from the chickens, who are still laying well, there's some red chile sauce, so huevos rancheros are an option, although I doubt the beans I made about 2+ weeks ago are still good (blech!!). There's a few slices of bacon, some pasta, random cheeses left over from a squash tart I made over the weekend. I know there's some kind of dish that involves pasta, a cream sauce and bacon. . .pasta. . car-something. Well, if the universe is set againt me getting any exercise this week (which it is, I've meaning to go every night this week!) I might as well have pasta with cream sauce and bacon, right? Right!

My old standby, Cooks Illustrated let me down but Google brought up What Geeks Eat, about halfway down the page. They had a super-simple receipe for Pasta Carbonara, which was exactly what I was looking for. Upon looking more closely, a recipe for Bacon Donuts with Maple Glaze showed up ("Can you make those now?" says Mr. P.), along with Pistachio Lambchops, a paella and a blogroll full of delicious sounding blogs.

So check it out!

2008-10-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

"WARNING TO THE PEOPLE OF SANTA FE"

Really, I'm not going out of my way to find this stuff. There were a bunch of these lying in a big stack on top of a newspaper rack near Ohori's. I hope you find it as amusing as I did:

2008-10-14T19:51:00.000-07:00

I would cry if this wasn't so darn funny in a Monty Pythonish sort of way. . .

Warring Monks Threaten Destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Excerpt:

The dispute over the Deir al-Sultan monastery [a small monastery on top of the Holy Sepulchre Church] is a more recent phenomenon dating back to Easter 1970. When the Coptic monks, who had controlled the area, went to pray in the main church and left the rooftop unattended, Ethiopian monks seized the opportunity to change the locks at the entrances before the Copts returned.

Relations between the two groups have remained tense ever since [ya think?], with the Coptic Church refusing to relinquish its claim to the monastery and posting a single monk there at all times. In the midst of a blistering heatwave in the summer of 2002, the Coptic monk on duty moved his chair from its agreed spot to a shadier corner. The move was taken as a hostile manoeuvre by the Ethiopians and 11 monks needed hospital treatment after the ensuing fracas.

Again, do you really need to make movies that make fun of religion? We do a much better job in-house, sad to say.

2008-10-13T20:38:00.000-07:00

"Welcome Red Autumn"

This was the last day for the garden. There's a chance of snow tonight, with a winter storm warning in effect. The lemon-grass plant has long been in, and today the rest of the herbs joined it in the long southern window. We pulled all the green tomatoes using headlamps in the dark. They are all crowded in a cardboard wine-box, with the basil plants I cut thrown on top.

It turned out to be a better year for the garden than I was expecting, especially considering my modest goals for the season. The basil did fairly well, well enough to make and freeze several batches of pesto. I would have liked more tomatoes, but we got enough to enjoy a consistent diet of fresh ripe tomatoes for the last couple months.

The problem with gardening this year was that it simply wasn't hot enough for things like tomatoes, eggplants and peppers to be really happy. Growing up in Texas, "not hot enough" is a new challenge. It has never occurred to me before this year when I tried to grow something that having a cool summer could possibly pose a problem. This summer was one of the most enjoyable I've spent in Santa Fe. We only had a few weeks of consistent 90+ weather, and the heat broke extremely early -- sometime in the middle of July I believe. And this was after one of the slowest-coming springs and summers I have ever seen here. Our last freeze was in June!

A cold spell in mid-July really set everything back. It did warm up again in August and September, but by then the plants simply didn't have enough time to get going again before it started falling into the 40s at night. I've been covering the tomatoes at night for the last month or so.

I tried three kinds this year: Striped Romans, a salad sized "white" tomato, and a large pink "Tajik" tomato whose seeds I got last year from a vendor at the Santa Fe Farmers Market. The white tomatoes were really a very pale yellow, but tasted simultaneously more mellow and more interesting than most standard yellow tomatoes. We grew the striped ones last year on the farm, and they are a fun, delicious tomato. The Tajik tomatoes were good and sweet but very slow to develop, so we didn't get as many of them. Here's a picture of all three kinds:

I've already requested the Baker Creek Catalogue for 2009. Dangerous, I know, especially when I'm not sure where I'll be next year, or how much room I'll have to grow things. Well, seeds don't take up that much room, right? And they keep for a looong time. . .

2008-10-08T15:18:00.001-07:00

Okay, One More

From David Brooks:

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.

Thank you! That nails the frustration I've been feeling since the Palin pick. I want to be a conservative (I think, whatever that means these days) but the idea that someone who cannot compose a coherent sentence without days of intensive preparation might very well be in charge of the United States, along with the largest military and nuclear arsenal is in world, is insulting and unacceptable. I've watched in shock as the "She's next door to Russia, so she has great foreign policy," argument has migrated from some Fox news pundit ("Okay, he's a Fox news pundit, what do you expect?") to Cindy McCain ("Okay, maybe she's not the brightest bulb in the shed, and she probably picked it up from the moron news pundit"), then on to McCain himself (WHAT?!?), then on the Palin's tortuous attempt to defend it to Couric (words fail). They really expect us to believe this? Really?

When I first started paying attention to politics it was the conservatives who seemed to embrace and support the intellect. William Buckley was a big fan of St. John's, a college based on the redical notion that some books are objectively "Great," that Truth is not subjective, and that it can be dicovered, at least in part, by us through diligent inquiry. This was in contrast to the intellectually shoddy liberals who filled up colleges with things like Women's Studies, Diversity Studies, etc., etc., etc.

And now it's this party, and Mr. Buckley's political and ideological (but not physical!) descendants who are championing the vice-presidential nomination of a woman who can't even name one magazine or newspaper that she reads on a regular basis! And seriously, with no exaggeration, she cannot form a coherent sentence, and has major problems with prepositions, subject, objects, and all those pesky things only elite, arugula-eating, America-hating liberals care about.

When asked about global warming, she said twice that she's "not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate." Huh? To be precise, that's what she said in the Couric interview, direct quote. But then she said pretty much the same thing in the VP debate. Okay, I think she was trying to say that she doesn't think that climate change is solely attributable to man-made causes. Fine. I know there are alot of smart people out there that think that. Fine. It's not the position I have a problem with. But c'mon, it's not that hard of a statement, especially if it's one you truly believe. So why can't she get the subject, object and preposition right, and in the correct order? Is that really too much to ask in a vice-president?

One of the justifications of studying logic and rhetoric in a classical education is that the ability to speak clearly is intrinsically tied to the ability to think and reason clearly. Clear speaking shows clear thinking. One of the best reasons to study Euclid is not as much to understand geometry as it is to expose your mind to one of the clearest and most elegant presentations of any subject that you will ever find. As you go through the propositions you are training your mind to think clearly and logically, moving easily from one mathematical truth to the truth. The same process is followed in Apollonius and Newton (although it's perhaps not quite as straightforward there), and even up through Einstein.

This nomination is a resounding slap in the face to those of us who value ideas, the intellect, and civil political discourse. If we hadn't just suffered through eight years of an aw-shucks, Joe Six-Pack, inarticulate president (and I voted for him in 2000), this might be a little more palatable. It also might be more palatable if we were not on the brink of a potential Great Depression, involved in two messy, horribly mismanaged wars to which I can see no honorable end, and facing a resugent Russia, and increasingly powerful China, and the possibility of a nuclear Iran. Oh yes, and it might be just a tad more acceptable if this incoherent VP were not the VP of a 70+ man with a history of cancer. Given all that, a party that would put forward a VP candidate of this caliber under these circumstances does. not. deserve. to. win. In fact, it fully deserves not only a second but a third helping of its own ass that's going to get handed to it on a plate this November.

UPDATE: William F. Buckley's son Christopher has just endorsed Obama. Read the whole thing.

2008-10-01T13:30:00.000-07:00

(Obligatory?) Political Anecdote for the Season

So I'm listening to an interview with McCain and he's trying to explain how proud he is of Palin's valuable experience, etc. etc., so he says she's been a mayor, she's been a governor, etc. "Don't forget the PTA!" I snarkily gripe at the radio. Well, gosh-durn it, he must've heard me through the radio because the next thing I knew he was talking about her experience on the PTA. Wow. Wow-eee wow wow.

Pass the popcorn! This election is better than anything you could ever make up!!!

How Wall Street Meets ~~Main St.~~ E. Palace Ave.

On Monday, after the Bailout bill failed and the market jumped without a parachute, my Lawyer Overlord came back from a lunch appointment, and straightway sent me out for vodka. Upon returning he had me make up Greyhounds for everyone (me & him).

Financial Crisis 0
jack 1

2008-09-30T20:31:00.000-07:00

Wow.

Watch at least 'til the "ZAP". And check out the backup singers. The guitarist is Mr. P's favorite.

Bill Maher, you got nothin' on this!

Hat tip to Orthodixie.

2008-09-27T20:41:00.000-07:00

UPDATE

As promised, pictures of local businesses I encountered on my last trip to Texas:

2008-08-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

MEET FRIEDRICH!

Well, we ended up with a rooster after all:

I decided to call him Friedrich (that's Fr-ee-der-ick), short for Friedrich the Fearsome, which is certainly how he sees himself. He's a very pretty bird (which is the main reason we still have him), and this photo doesn't do him justice. He has very nice, long, iridescent tail feathers, and he has more reddish-brown feathers growing in with his black and white.

I'd like to keep him, because he's quite a character, but we'll see. . . He just started crowing this week. He's still getting the hand of it, and right now, at least, he confines himself to fairly civilized hours, but I have to think that'll change. A crowing rooster is quaint and picturesque at 9:00am, not so much at 6:00am, especially on a Saturday. So, charming or not, Friedrich, you'd better behave, or else Peculiar might get a hankerin' for some homemade chicken noodle soup:

2008-08-27T12:50:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: I was wanting to post this earlier, but didn't have my book with me. How can you translate to film this inimitable line:

Indubitably there was a sort of heavy dragging, and a most detestably sticky noise as of some fiendish and unclean species of suction.

And no, it appears that the new movie is NOT playing here (at least not presently). Probably just as well.

P.S. I also just gave Peculiar a jolly good Lovecraft line about a sunfish. Check it out.

Anyone else catch this? A new Cthulhu movie! It's simply called Cthulhu, and is loosely based on Shadow Over Innsmouth, which I was just re-reading last night. There's a gay-love subplot, apparently, and Tori Spelling's in it (no, not the title role, be nice!). I'll have to see if it's playing here. Might be worth a matinee ("If we sneak in a lot of beer," says Peculiar). Stay tuned.

2008-07-22T20:21:00.000-07:00

Science!

I think I just might have the scoop on this one. Odious, Steve, this is for you (although Mr. P will no doubt be highly amused/appalled when he gets back from the bottom of the Grand Canyon).

Apparently, a scientific research materials company called Eppendorf has developed a line of automated pipetting systems called epMotion. And what better way to sell automated pipetting systems than making a music video with. . . a boy band?!?!

Oh yes. You have to take a look. Don't ask any questions. Just do it.

But if you insist, here's a sample of some of the lyrics:

Pipetting all those well-plates, baby,
sends your thumbs into overdrive
And spending long nights in the lab makes
it hard for your love to thrive.

CHORUS:

And it’s called epMotion
(whisper: ‘cause you deserve something really great)
Girl you need epMotion
(whisper: yeah girl it’s time to automate)
It’s got to be epMotion
(whisper: no more pipetting late at night)
Only for you epMotion
(whisper: girl this time we got it right)

DNA
RNA
Proteins
Cell Cultures
Less reagents
Faster workflow
Saves you money
Well, well, well

Well, well, well indeed.

I am waaaaay too amused by this.

2008-07-08T18:44:00.000-07:00

Support Your Local Businesses!

On a recent trip to the Great Republic, I mean. . . uh. . State, that is, of Texas I was very sorry not to have a camera handy when I saw the following business establishments:

The Yahweh Beauty Salon
That one was in my lovely hometown of Killeen, right across from my old high school.

Chupacabras Ice Cream Parlor
In Dallas, one of the quaint, "ethnic" neighborhoods.

That's all I know, folks. Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to patronize either of these fine, local, family-run (presumably) establishments. I don't know what kind of ice cream flavors they had at Chupacabras (I'm open to suggestions) and Yahweh Beauty Salon (or maybe it was Beauty School, or Academy), well, I just have no idea. There's material there for a short story, but it might not be believable.

2008-06-28T12:53:00.000-07:00

For all of you out there who, like me, can spend hours with a hymnbook (or any songbook, really), here's:

The Cyber Hymnal

You know all those old hymns you've heard just the first line of and can't remember any more, and that one line gets in your head and drives you crazy since you CAN'T FIND THE REST OF THE SONG???? You can probably find it here. They have hundreds, if not thousand of hymns here, lyrics, scores and accompaniment. Mostly Protenstant-ish hymns, but also quite few I reognize from the newer Catholic Hymnals (I'll let you decide if that's a good thing. . .).

But why are many of these traditional hymns so freakin' hard to sing? I was looking at old songs I hadn't sung in years and not only are they written for high sopranos, but they often have huge, awkward jumps, then they throw in all sorts of random chromaticism, just for the fun of it. Did they want the congregations to sound bad, or were people just better singers back then?

Oh yes, and they have translations of certain hymns into very unexpected languages indeed!

2008-06-25T19:41:00.000-07:00

Things I Like About Biking Around Town:

1. Getting exercise without going to the gym.
2. I can eat more chocolate & cheese (see #1).
3. Playing Go To The Head of The Stop Sign Line (that one's really fun downtown!)
4. Being outside.
5. Save a little money. (And I do mean a little here. Since I live so close to everything I go to on a regular basis, I'm only saving about $20/month, even with $4/gallon gas! Not exactly an incentive.)
6. Sticking it to the Man!!!! (well, kinda. . . a bit. . . maybe)

Things I Don't Like About Biking Around Town:
1. Everyone looks at you.
2. There is a set, inverse ratio between the length of my skirt and the strength of the wind.
3. I look like a dork, I'm sure of it, especially with the helmet. Yes, yes, I wear one, don't worry.
4. You arrive at work (or church or wherever) hot and sweaty.
5. You have to think out things (errands, appointments, shopping trips, etc.) a bit further in advance. You don't have quite as much spontaneity. But that's probably a good thing, I suppose.

2008-06-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

They grow up
so fast. . .

They're starting to look like chickens, don't you think?

It was only after spending time with chickens that I saw the connection between birds and dinosaurs. . . I'm really glad they don't get much bigger than they do!

2008-06-18T16:41:00.000-07:00

New Mexico is Odd

I know it's a shock to everyone, but New Mexico is a strange place in more ways than one. But here are the things that make me make that statement today.

State Seal:

Okay, I know most normal people don't pay much attention to state seals. And I don't blame them. But working in the legal profession I deal with various state agencies often, and from time to time I find myself studying the seal (or other such things) on the walls of various state buildings while I'm waiting for someone to do something. But this Seal must be the most (well, one of the most) amusingly politically incorrect official symbols out there. Look at it. It's got the Mexican Eagle with a snake, perched on a cactus, as in the Mexican flag. But then there's this large, American Bald Eagle perched benevolently over the Mexican Eagle, protecting it with its strong, encompassing wings. Don't worry, cute little Mexican Eagle, we'll protect you.

Then there's the State Motto, which is on the Seal, but you can't really see it. It's Crescit Eundo, which officially translates as, "It grows as it goes."

Stop sniggering. It's the Official Motto.

No, that's not funny, not funny at all. You should be ashamed of yourself.

There was some talk a few years ago about changing the motto, with its more-than-slightly-ambiguous implications, but nothing ever came of it. According to the omniscient Wikipedia it's a quote from Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, of all things, describing a thunderbolt. It was thought that the quote would suggest "dynamic growth."

Stop it.

But both of these things really are good symbols of New Mexico: odd, quirky, kind of clueless in an amusing sort of way, with not-so-subtle sordid undertones.

In another odd New Mexican story, I just saw that the mayor of Santa Fe has invited the King of Spain to come out for a visit. Spain still has a King, who knew? Anyway, that would be amusing. I wonder if all the scary Spaniards of Northern New Mexico would turn out en masse to sing the Spanish equivalent of God Save the King. I'll keep you posted.

2008-06-16T19:01:00.000-07:00

Chickens!!

Well, as promised, here are some pictures of the newest addition to the family.

Here they all are, pecking and peeping away:

We got six: two Araucanas, two Buff Orptingtons and two Rhode Island Whites. My favorites by far are the Araucanas:

They are fairly mellow-tempered, for chickens, and seem to be the most intelligent and curious of the lot. I think they were the first to have an inkling of a reality outside their box. I'm told they're closer to wild chickens than most breeds, which might have something to to with it. Plus, they lay greenish-blue eggs, (really!) which is certainly a plus!

Here are the Buffs. They'll be a really pretty golden color, and seem fairly easy-going too. I took them all outside for the first time the other day and the Buffs were the first (and quite enthusiastic) to take to the concept to eating bugs, and anything else that moved. Good for them!

And here's the Rhode Island White (below). As of now, this is my least favorite of the breeds. They're quite skittish and are prone to start peeping hysterically if separated from their companions for any amount of time. Apparently it's a rare breed that was developed in the 1800's and has been brought back due to the increased interest in heirloom/heritage flora and fauna. They're supposed to be good layers like the better-known Rhode Island Reds.

I know most of these aren't very good pictures, but I wanted to get these up to at least give you all something to look at. They've grown alot just since I've taken these pictures. Their wings are pretty well feathered out and they're starting to get real feathers on their tails and shoulders. Towards the end of the week they started to notice that they had wings. One would stretch her wings out and flap them, much to the disquietude of all her sisters: "What are you doing?!?!? What's going on?!?!?!? AAAAHHHHH!!! Hey, look, newspaper. I think I'll peck it. . . "

The neighbors have "custody" of them this week, which is just as well since I'll be out of town the latter part of the week.

Pretty cute, huh?

2008-06-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

Stuff People Like

Just in case you were wondering:

Stuff White People Like Limited in its scope to yuppies, but then, I suppose most yuppies are white, so, okay, whatever. But keep in mind the Stuff White People in the Midwest Like would be completely different. It would include Jello, Collections, Lawns, Family Reunions, Lakes, Family Reunions at Lakes and Target, among other things.

Stuff Black People Love This is a really funny site. Examples of stuff black people love: Multisyllabic names that end with a vowel and Seeing White People with shorts on when its cold outside (it's like Groundhog Day!).

Stuff Catholics Like Oh so true, so true!! Examples: Retreats, Babies (duh!), Knees, Relics, Miracles, okay but Clapping in Church? I lost you on that one. I was Catholic for 18 years or so and I never clapped in church, unless the occasion warranted it. So it's become a Catholic Thing to clap after the service is over. Really? Funny post though.

I couldn't find Stuff Orthodox People Like but it really writes itself, doesn't it. It's too easy. Standing, beards, icons, incense, monks, calendars, anything Russian or Greek, arguing about esoteric things that no one really understands but that doesn't stop us, etc., etc., etc. Suggestions?

But then I found that, as is the case with most things you start looking into on the internet, this is only the tip of the iceberg. So if you're interested in, say Stuff Iranians Like (it's really, really not anything you might be thinking), it's out there!!

2008-06-11T14:09:00.000-07:00

Unlikely Operas Part II

This seems to be turning into a theme. Here's something else I have never thought of as an opera, but, hey, why not? I mean, if you've already got gay cowboys, doesn't an opera logically follow? I haven't read the story yet, or seen the movie, so maybe it's not as odd as it seems at first. What do you think? You can hear some of the composer's music here. It's not my favorite style on first listen, but I only listened to a few pieces out of many.

2008-06-02T20:01:00.000-07:00

Huh?!?

What's just about the last thing you think about when you think opera? What is so far removed from opera that it's inconceivable to think about them in the same sentence? Umm. . . crazy communist dictators? No, they already did that one. Ummm. . . the Royal Navy? No, got tickets to that one already. How 'bout. . .Al Gore? No, it has nothing to do with 2000 or Florida, which would be perhaps vaguely entertaining. Just imagine the possibilities. A plaintive aria and chorus of retired Manhattannites who have just discovered they have tragically voted for Pat Buchannan. A stirring end-of-act chorus of protesters, vote-counters, commentators, with Bush and Gore soaring over it all (I suppose Bush would have to be the tenor). The Supreme Court could have a complex, dramatic nontet (maybe a ballet thrown in?) with two opposing themes that somehow fit discordantly together. Definitely potential. Anyone interested?

But no. It's ummm. . . . global warming? Yeah. Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli has been working on an opera based on. . . um. . . An Inconvenient Truth. . . yeah. . . for La Scala in 2011. I tried to find some information on this guy, but it's pretty thin. I've found adjectives like "post-modern", and "experimental", and the opera in question will be done in a "multi-media" format. None of which inspires confidence. His choice of subjects is quite interesting though. His works include an opera about a drunk who's in charge of maintaining Lennin's preserved body, Richard III (in English with a Flemish opera company) and something about Hector and Achilles, although I haven't been able to find much about that at all.

The only way in which I see this working is probably not the way he's going to do it, given the experimental, atonal, multi-media thing. It could maybe be neat if they went totally Pagan, with a rockin' contralto Gaia singing like Fricka. . . maybe. But somehow I don't think that's the tack there're going to take.

2008-05-28T16:54:00.000-07:00

After more than a year of blogging idleness, Kate's latest meme (via Voracious Reader) has roused me out of my stupor. Well, and the fact that Peculiar is gone for a month might have something to do with it too. I'm more inspired to blog when I don't have to pry someone else off the computer first. . . I think anyone who might remotely read this blog has already seen this, but on the off chance it's new to anyone, feel free to respond.

Anyway, here goes.

The rules:
Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your tbr list.

Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion*
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary ("Emma on French crack" is a pretty good description, but Emma on French crack might at least be funny!)
The Odyssey*
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad*
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World*
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray*
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid (yes, fellow Johnnies, I somehow didn't finish this one, I know, I know)
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

It is an odd list. Anyone else?

2007-06-14T13:41:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally made the leap and signed up with a Google account, so I can return to the world of blogging (albeit sporadically for the moment). When I have a few minutes at public libraries I can relate the joys and tribulations of interning on a small-scale, organic farm. Oh joy! Time's up for today, though!

2007-01-07T15:21:00.000-08:00

SNOW!!!!

Perhaps some of you have heard about the unprecedented 2-4 feet of snow that fell on Northern New Mexico last week. This was the view that greeted me last Saturday:

Yes, that was our driveway and that's me, waist-deep in snow! Luckily we were bright enough to park at the top of the driveway:

The lump to the left is our landlord's car. Took us about 2 hours to dig them out. Luckily someone in the neighborhood has a plow, so the road going out was fairly passable!

2007-01-03T17:11:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday!

Today is Tolkein's birthday. So raise a glass of mead and enjoy a bit of Beowulf!

2006-10-31T08:56:00.000-08:00

Happy Halloween!

Your Halloween messge from the Pumpkin King:

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. (Is anyone surprised?) Part of the appeal, no doubt was that, growing up in Texas, Halloween was about the time when the oppressive heat finally broke and you were convinced that the earth wasn't going to be scorched into a cinder, at least, not for another year. Here in milder climes, the summer usually breaks sometime in August, by now we're well into cool weather.

But more than the change of the season, Halloween was a time when strange, unusual things could happen. The pattern of ordinariness was disturbed and suddenly your teacher would show up looking like a witch, the check out girl at the store was Wonder Woman, your father turned into a scarecrow. You got to stay up late, wander the streets after dark and eat more candy than everyone knew you should. But more than that, there was the sense that everyone, even the adults, joined in in a delightful game, even if just for one night. I loved the houses that set up graveyards, mini haunted houses, numerous pumpkins or otherwise really got into the night. I was delighted when the adults that passed out candy dressed up too, or tried to scare us with some kind of prank.

The (Catholic) school I attended put on a wonderful Halloween Carnival every year. It wasn't a sanitized All Saint's Day Festival, or a Fall Festival, but a real Halloween Carnival, complete with a haunted house. Everyone came dressed up -- teachers, parents, students and there were no limitations on the kinds of costumes you could wear. There were witches and devils, vampires and princesses. I went as a mermaid one year in a great costume my dad made for me. Perhaps the most original costume I saw over the years was a gumball machine! There were games and a cakewalk (by the way, does anyone do those anymore?), bobbing for apples, a costume contest and, of course, the haunted house. The fifth and sixth graders always got to put on the haunted house, turning the P.E. room into a thing of terror to the younger kids. Looking back, it wasn't anything too elaborate: blacklights, maybe a strobe light, fake blood and cooked spaghetti and peeled grapes, and a bunch of ten-year-olds popping out from behind things, running about screaming, moaning and grabbing passers-by. But it was always the highlight of the Carnival, and the older kids loved putting it on. Fifth grade was by far my best year of gradeschool (maybe of all schooling) and one of the highlights of the year was putting on the haunted house. We started planning it in late September and we all tried to get done with our schoolwork early so we could go string milk cartons together (what the purpose of that was I don't remember) or color huge murals with blacklight crayons.

With this kind of background, it came as a surprise to me that there were people who didn't celebrate Halloween because they considered it demonic or associated with paganism. "C'mon," I thought, "No one takes the ghosts and witches seriously, it's just fun to get dressed up and let yourself have a good scare." In recent years, however, I've heard that point of view more often. At my church, for example, there is an All Saints' party tonight, where people come dressed as a favorite saint. Although no one has said it aloud, the implied sentiment (and sometimes implied sentiments are worse than spoken ones) is that Halloween isn't quite the thing one should be doing. The All Saints parties in past years have been amusing and not unpleasant, but they certainly pale in comparison to my memories of Halloween. There's something missing. I heard someone recently say, as a criticism, "Halloween is a time when people say, 'I'm tired of being good, I'm going to put that aside, just for today.' It's a time when people embrace the things they shouldn't be doing and do horrible things . . ." I just don't think it's that simple.

Halloween, and our celebration of it, is a fairly complex thing these days. Here in America we don't have too many public celebrations, especially ones involving pagentry or creativity. Most of our even semi-public celebrations are, frankly, rather stiff and boring. They don't have to be, but by and large they are. But Halloween, on the other hand, is all about pagentry and surprise. Last year, I think, I happened to be eating in downtown Santa Fe on a Saturday summer morning. As we were leaving the restaurant, I saw a colorfully dressed crowd go by, with floats and banners. Looking closer, I realized that it was Gay Pride weekend, and this was the big parade on its way to the Plaza. Think what you will about the idea of Gay Pride, but it looked like the crowd was having a pretty good time. I thought, "It's too bad that you have to be gay to get dressed up and have a parade." Well, Halloween is pretty much the only time when all of us, straight, gay, male, female, etc., can dress up and be theatrical in a socially acceptable way. A friend of mine who grew up in Italy said that he was surprised to see how people celebrated Halloween here. In Italy, he said, people had festivals and got dressed up in the Spring, usually right before Lent. That way, the merry-making was intertwined with the liturgical life of the church.

It seems that most cultures have some sort of festival where things are not what they seem, a time to get outside your usual roles and routines, a celebration of the unexpected and odd. Halloween is the only thing that even vaguely fills this role in our culture. Perhaps that's why "alternative Halloween parties," such as All Saints parties or Fall Festivals, have always felt flat to me. The idea of an All Saints' party, where one can only dress up as a saint, fails to fulfill this need to embrace, at least temporarily, the unexpected and odd (not the evil and demonic, there is a difference).

Halloween also, even for us unbanized moderns, still in some way marks the change of the seasons. On a vulgar, commercial level, Halloween is the start of the "Holiday" season, albeit perhaps not something to be celebrated as such. It's the beginning of the end of the year, signalling the time to start preparing for a new year. The ancient Celts did this by bringing their flocks down to winter pastures, cutting firewood and deciding which animals would be slaughtered. We order new calendars, buy tickets for Thanksgiving and Christmas traveling and start thinking about Christmas gifts and plans. Pitiful as it is, it's still some sort of marking the change of seasons, moving into a "special" time of the year.

Whatever truly dark side there is to this day, I (thankfully) have no firsthand knowledge of. I've heard from people who claim to know these things that genuinely dark things are done this day and this night. I'll let them have their opinion; that's one google search I don't want to do. But dressing up with red plastic horns and a pitchfork seems miles away from occult rituals attempting to call up and commune with real demons. Evil is real, we see that by reading any newspaper. Real evil isn't about cheap thrills, ghosts and graveyards and such, but about greed, hatred, fear, jealousy, hard-heartedness, addictions, the mundane but horrible things that twist, warp and deform the soul. Real evil kills laughter, companionship and the healthy enjoyment of the gifts God has given us out of His goodness. But real evil isn't what 99.99% of us are celebrating today. For most of us, it's a time to meet our neighbors, practice generosity, and perhaps put our dignity aside for the day and join in the game!