Thanksgiving redux

Tonight I happily took part in yet another Thanksgiving feast, this one with twenty or so colleagues who also happen to be excellent cooks.  I lustily scarfed down all of the foods the whole family missed out on last week, when, thanks to the stomach flu, chicken soup as about exciting as the menu got.  Between dinner and dessert, we all gathered in a circle in the living room, and each of us in turn shared with the group what he or she was thankful for.  My turn came up quickly, and even though we've technically just finished the Thanksgiving holiday proper and I should still have my list on the tip of my tongue, I got caught off-guard.  By the time we'd gone around the circle, I wished I could have another turn -- so I'm giving myself one now.  Here, then, are a few important things I left out.

1. I'm thankful that I get to spend nearly all day, every day, reading, thinking, and learning about subjects that interest me.  When I really stop to think about what a privilege this is -- people, I actually get paid to do this -- my mind boggles.  It's easy to lose sight of how lucky I am when I get caught up in what I might ungratefully think of as the "daily grind" of academic life, which does, after all, require that I spend a fair number of hours out of the week doing work and attending events that are a real, no-two-ways-about-it waste of time.  But, for the most part, my daily work is all for the benefit of my own intellectual development, in one way or another -- how many people can say that?

2.  I am thankful to be hopeful about the future.  Personally and professionally, I have plenty to look forward to in 2011 and beyond.  While I am frequently amazed by how providentially my last couple of years here have unfolded, sometimes I forget to compare my current state of mind to the one I held not too long ago.  For one thing, I thought it pretty improbable -- not unreasonably, I still maintain -- that I would ever meet someone I would want to spend the rest of my life with.  It is amazing how much difference a hopeful outlook can make on the quality of daily life.

3.  I am thankful to have a wealth of vivid memories of places I've been and people I've known to draw on whenever I like, and sometimes involuntarily.  I've been fortunate to have traveled many places and to have gotten to know a lesser number of places extremely well, and it is an extraordinary gift to be able to return to an old familiar street, to put myself back in the company of an old friend or an interesting acquaintance, or to without even willing it be hurled across the country or across the ocean in my mind at the sight or sniff of an evocative image or smell.  No matter where I go from here, I'll bring all of my experiences with me, and I'm thankful for that.


There are plenty of other things, too, big and little, abstract and concrete.  It would take quite a few Thanksgivings to recognize and meditate fittingly upon all of the things I'm grateful for and should be more grateful for.  Multiple Thanksgivings, hm -- not a bad idea.

I'll pass

By now you have probably heard about the couple in Minnesota who have set up a website where people can vote on whether they should abort their child, now at 17 weeks gestation.  The vote will close 16 days from now, two days before the last legal day for them to procure an abortion.  It goes without saying that this is unbelievably sick, whether or not this couple intends actually to hand over their decision to strangers and whatever their ultimate decision.

What is less clear-cut is what the appropriate response to this site should be for a person of conscience.  I have seen several pleas online, from people I respect, to visit the website and vote "no".  Still, somehow, I cannot bring myself to click that button and thereby participate in this disgusting scheme.  I understand the importance of being a strong pro-life witness, and I agree wholeheartedly with a number of messages to this couple posted on the website (which I have visited) by strangers concerned for the life of their child.  In any case, leaving well thought-out comments attempting to awaken these people to the value of life seems to me a far preferable response to participating in the vote.  Still, a large part of me is so revolted by this couple's whole project and the hype it has attracted that I regret even contributing to the flood of traffic to their website, let alone legitimizing it by attempting to engage with its depraved creators.

To attempt to engage with them, to show outrage and beg them to let their baby live, is exactly what they want -- they could hardly have expected any other response in setting up such a forum.  These people are only going to hear what they want to hear, exercising control over the fascinated and horrified public while reserving the right to disregard the ultimate outcome of their poll.  I feel manipulated enough, having been lured to their website by sheer amazement at the evil it represents, without stooping to participating further.  Maybe in this case the best response is one directed away from these particular two people and toward society at large.  We need to take a hard look at what it is about our culture that can produce such a total disregard for the value of life.  I will pray for this couple's baby -- abominably dubbed "Wiggles" -- but also for all unborn babies and their parents, and for a change of heart in our entire culture.  Maybe the shock that this website has generated will turn out to be an impetus in the right direction.

Enough of the heavy stuff.  I have another divisive issue to discuss:  the relative merits of cakes and pies.  This weekend, I made my first pie all by myself, start to finish, crust and all.  It was utterly unrewarding.  I spent most of the morning in the stop-and-start process of making the crust -- making the dough, chilling it, rolling it, prebaking it -- and then, there was still the filling to go.  I had a terrible time getting the pumpkin custard to set up, and the crust turned out sadly overdone.

Baking cakes, by contrast, is nearly always a pleasure.  I often hang up my work for the night at 10:30 or 11 p.m. and head to the kitchen to make a cake, which will be baked and snugly sealed into my cake carrier before midnight.  The process of making a cake is all active time -- except for the baking time, during which I can get some reading done undisturbed.  If the cake is a success, wonderful!  It's been time well-spent, and I have a tasty reward.  If not, no great loss -- I've still had some steady, therapeutic baking time at the end of my day -- sans coating my kitchen table and likely the floor with butter and flour -- and it's really no great loss.  Besides, there's so much variety in cakes:  fancy cakes, coffee cakes, layer cakes, loaf cakes, cakes with fruit, chocolate, nuts, lots of butter, not so much butter, etc., etc.  I feel like an artist when I make a cake.  I felt like a maniac making a pie.

Tonight I soothed my pie-frazzled nerves by baking a cake I've had my eye on since last fall, a bittersweet chocolate and pear cake I saw on Smitten Kitchen.  It's one of the best I've made, and I don't think that's just the pie frustration talking.  From here on out, I'll leave pies to Mrs. Smith or whoever else cares to take the trouble over them -- I'm sticking with cakes.

Augustine, inside out

I made a start today on reading through the early letters of St. Augustine.  This semester, I've been reading the four dialogues Augustine wrote while in retreat at Cassiciacum, near Lake Como in Italy, in 386-87, during the time between his conversion to Christianity and his baptism.  The dialogues themselves are revealing of the inward turn Augustine took in his own search for Truth and which he advocated for his students, and the letters provide yet another intimate level of evidence showing this trend in his thought.

What struck me most today about these letters, though, is that, as personal as Augustine's investigation of his own mind and soul was, it also enabled him to achieve a remarkable depth in his interpersonal relationships as well.  As he shows in his famous prayer at the opening of the second book of the Soliloquies -- "Noverim me, noverim te (May I know myself, may I know you)" -- Augustine realized that self-knowledge could only be achieved through knowledge of God.  And what could be more universally meaningful, what could bind friends together more powerfully, than an understanding of all people as creatures made by God, in his image?  Keeping this in mind, it seems only natural that Augustine and his friends wrote to one another about their intense longing to be physically present together and to compare the findings of their soul-searching and to test their tentative conclusions against each other.  All people being equal and united under God, it only makes sense that friends should assist one other in their ascent towards Truth.

As I admired the intimacy of Augustine's correspondence and the import of the issues at stake therein, I inevitably recognized the general shallowness of my own correspondence.  For this, to whatever degree it exists, I take full personal responsibility -- I'm not tempted toward a tritely gloomy reflection on the detriment of modern media on our social relationships.  What an endlessly facile scapegoat technology can be.  But I'll avoid getting heavy on this point.

So, instead, the day's culinary highlights.  I continue to explore the new Essential New York Times Cookbook, and it hasn't led me astray so far.  Tonight, I had planned to try out Mark Bittman's Pork and Sweet Potatoes in Coconut Milk, but I had to sub in chicken at the last minute when I discovered -- the nose doesn't lie -- that my pork had gone off.  The dish turned out well anyway, with the coconut milk reducing into a thickish creamy sauce that I finished with lime juice.  I served it with Basmati Rice with Coconut Milk and Ginger, from the same book, which turned out to be a nice match as well as a good way to use up the rest of my can of coconut milk.  Tonight, after reaching my brain's limit in gathering thoughts for a new paper, I whipped up, finally, a batch of Dorie Greenspan's Great Grains muffins, which I've wanted to try for a long time.  I've flash frozen them to bake up tomorrow morning -- there's no better incentive to get out of bed than fresh muffins.  We'll see how they turn out.

Not even funny

I have often thought that someone could make a really hilarious reality show exposing what goes in creative writing workshops.  While I got a lot of good writing practice in my creative nonfiction classes as an undergrad, workshop sessions often ranged from exasperating to downright absurd.  In fiction workshops, there were always the obviously autobiographical stories of suicide, drug addiction, death, divorce, etc., discussions about which were much more therapy sessions for the authors than any kind of exercise in literary criticism.  In nonfiction workshops, the classic oversharers had free rein to spill their guts with total abandon, a privilege that resulted in, for example, an hourlong discussion of a female student's extended essay on her experience of childbirth and its gory aftermath, exploring in depth the significance of her own placenta and historical views on that organ.  If I found the experience uncomfortable, my squeamishness was nothing compared to the horrified response of our sixty-something male professor.

My experience in these classes provided plenty of material for TV-worthy situational comedy, but, for all that, it always had some redeeming value.  Despite the nonsense I sometimes had to read and treat seriously in class discussions, it was always the case that most of my classmates were honestly doing the best work they were capable of.  I could count on getting thoughtful comments on my work from at least a couple of fellow writers whose opinions I respected, and my professors always held the class to a sufficiently high standard to stimulate real effort, whatever kind of product resulted.

This semester, I am in a workshop once again, this time entitled Advanced Translation.  I had high hopes for this class:  the title sounded rigorous, and it is offered through one of the nation's leading writing departments.  Unfortunately, it has turned out to be the worst kind of sham.  This is hardly material for a satirical T.V. show.  This is prime fodder for an expose on how Ivy League professors get away with absolute murder, pulling down full salaries for decades in compensation for precisely zero actual work, while offering their students the opportunity to get an impressive-sounding credential on their transcripts for investing nearly zero effort.  While there are a couple of truly talented students in the class who consistently share well-crafted translations, the work we discuss is usually a far cry from advanced, displaying a bare minimum of effort and a profound lack of understanding of the rudiments of the English language.  Today's seemingly interminable class was especially illustrative of the laziness and lack of rigor that have been so characteristic of our weekly sessions, but after enduring two and a half hours of such nonsense, I simply don't have the stomach to describe it.

What I do have the stomach for:  the couple of dishes I've prepared from my new cookbook.  Last night:  a chocolate cake that takes about five minutes to get in the oven, contains only five tablespoons of oil and no other fat, and that turned out to be a moist, fudgy delight.  Tonight:  spaghetti with roasted peppers and fried eggs.  I roasted a pepper myself, and although I think I can improve on my method next time, the result was pretty tasty.  I would have enjoyed my dinner in any case, but it's truly amazing how satisfying it can be to put together a decent homemade meal -- to perform the simple, honest, useful act of feeding myself -- after sitting for hours feeling potentially productive time slip painfully.  Although, come to think of it, I guess that monumental waste of my time produces the useful result of putting dinner on my professor's table -- a pretty good wage for the couple of useless, redundant comments he made today.

Grocery list night

I love making my weekly grocery list.  I exercise great restraint in putting it off until Thursday night, Grocery Shopping Eve.  Then, after my work is done, I have the treat of going through cookbooks, cooking magazines, and the "Cook Me!" bookmarks file on my internet browser to select recipes for the coming week.  I usually get to plan on two dinners, to cook Monday and Wednesday, along with, usually, a dessert of some kind and a breakfast item -- maybe even two.  It may not sound exciting, and this certainly hasn't always been my habit:  it still amazes me that I've come so far from just a little over a year ago, when the dinner rotation still consisted of blue box macaroni and cheese (usually with a can of tuna thrown in for protein), store-brand waffles and scrambled eggs, and Maruchan ramen noodles (with an egg and some Tabasco sauce thrown in, and maybe a few mushrooms, if I was feeling like real grad student gourmet).  Two (successful) sight exams and 14 months later, I am a reformed eater, and I love the creative outlet that cooking provides.

This week, happily, I have a new cookbook to browse through as I compile my list (and at mealtimes, and before bedtime...):  The new Essential New York Times Cookbook, edited by Amanda Hesser, out just last week.  It's a big and beautiful book, featuring over 1,000 recipes spread over 932 pages.  So far, one interesting entree has made the dinner lineup for this week: Spaghetti with Fried Eggs and Roasted Peppers (p. 339).  I'm especially intrigued by the addition of a couple of sunny-side up eggs over the pasta in the final step, which bleed their yolks over the noodles like a butter sauce.  I wish I had time to make the Dijon and Cognac Beef Stew (p. 560-61), but that may just have to wait until Christmas break.

It's been a long day here, wrapping up with my two-and-a-half-hour seminar finishing at 9 p.m.  Tomorrow morning I'll wake up ready to go, grocery list completed for our evening shopping trip and brain refreshed for an afternoon of joining Augustine in his quest to see Lady Wisdom buck naked (see Soliloquia 1 -- it's really too good to miss).

On academic idolatry

I've been working today on rounding up some ideas I've wanted to go back to since reading Augustine's early dialogue De ordine a few weeks ago. In all of three of the early dialogues, the character of Licentius, a student of Augustine's from Milan who has retreated with him to Cassiciacum, stands out to me, as I think he must for any reader. He's hopelessly smitten with poetry, and he constantly earns sharp rebukes from Augustine for spending too much time playing with his verses and too little devoting himself to philosophy. And even when he engages with all his intellectual might in the dialogues' debates, he is always -- as he is painfully aware -- being scrutinized by Augustine's relentless critical eye.

One of the most poignant moments in the dialogues comes in the middle of the first book of De ordine. In a nighttime debate that takes place in the bedroom that all of the interlocutors share, Licentius has just had what, in my view, is a triumph of intellectual self-sufficiency, converting to the study of philosophy on his own terms. But, in the morning light, we see Licentius creeping to the bedside of Augustine and asking quietly, timidly: "What do you think of me?" Throughout the dialogues, Licentius seems as hindered as he is helped by the presence of Augustine, a teacher whom he admires and respects greatly despite his harsh pedagogical style. As I see it, having to worry about how he is perceived by someone whose opinion he values highly is simply distracting, to the point of being counterproductive. But, then again, the same desire to please probably produces results that independent study would not; we do not need to pursue a goal for its own sake in order to attain it.

I think most students have a bit of Licentius in them -- I know that I do. I've had many an academic crush in my day, and especially when I was about his age, in my mid-teens. Most of these crushes have been on women; looking back, I wanted to be these women as much as I wanted them to approve of me. They were role models elevated to the level of idols. And while I knocked myself out to do well in their classes, I know that the energy I expended simply idolizing my teachers personally, if not actually unhealthy, could have been better spent otherwise -- such as in developing my own personal talents and interests, while worrying less about conforming to a model constructed by someone else.

For me, Licentius, and all of us, I think, this is part of the push-and-pull of growing up. We need people we respect and admire to push us to realize our potential, but ultimately, it must be our own potential that we aim to realize. This is why I feel for poor Licentius in De ordine; it's painful to see him briefly, triumphantly assert his independence, only to revert to quietly, anxiously yearning for his teacher's approval.

In other news: it's been a day of good eatin' here! I made for the second time what we are now calling simply "pumpkin", as if there's nothing else one can do with a pumpkin, but is called by Dorie Greenspan in her new book "Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good." And by everything, we're talking bread, cheese, bacon, apples, nuts, and whatever else strikes your fancy! I also tried a new cranberry sauce recipe, which was unanimously adopted for the Thanksgiving lineup. Score.

A tough read

Culling through news headlines this morning, I came across one of the most powerfully reported features I've seen in a long time: an article and accompanying photographs in the New York Times on female self-immolation in Afghanistan, a horrifying and apparently common act of desperation among Afghani women who are oppressed and abused by their husbands, fathers, brothers, and in-laws. Fire, it seems, is one of the few resources available to these women when their lives seem unbearable, appealing particularly because it seems surefire: the worst outcome of a suicide attempt would be surviving it, and jumping from the roof, for example, leaves too high a risk of such a fate. Nonetheless, as the article showed, more than a few women are so unlucky as to survive attempted immolation. The article was difficult to get through, profiling several individual survivors, but the photographs accompanying it were truly devastating. I don't think I've ever seen such intense suffering captured by a camera. Seeing one woman convulsing in agony as the bandages on her full-body burns were changed brought tears to my eyes and, I hope, to the eyes of people all around the world today. At a time when the future of journalism is precarious, and sloppy, frivolous reporting abounds, this feature was a powerful reminder of the force of the best kind of reporting -- brave, honest, revelatory, important. This is the type of reporting that can bring about change for the good in our world, and seeing this feature this morning has had me thinking all day about how I can convert my emotional response to it into something more proactive and useful.

A final, lighter note on my culinary achievement of the day. When I get home late late after a lecture, investing even more of the evening in making dinner does not always appeal. Sometimes, though, resisting the urge to slam a quick fried egg sandwich or similar more than repays the effort. After taking the first bite of my dinner at 8:30 tonight, I was very glad indeed that I'd taken the time to throw together one of my all-time favorite fall dishes, Warm Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad from Smitten Kitchen. Every time I taste this salad, I'm ready to scrap every other butternut squash preparation I know. This is just the best.