Obama -- YES!

Death by Chocolate

On Saturday, we were invited to eat dinner with friends. They were going to make the Thai food. Our assignment was to bring pizza for the kids to eat and dessert.


The pizza part was easy -- cheese pizza bought from the local Acme. But the gourmet kind.

What about dessert? What to make? What to make?

Pumpkin pie? No, I could not remember if the other teenage boy liked pumpkin.

Cinnamon rolls? No, I had done that before and there is the unspoken challenge to always bring something new.

My grandma's famous Texas sheet cake? No, I had done that before too.

So...the only thing left was to make a cake with the name "Death by Chocolate." Now this recipe was given to me by a very good friend named Mary Anne. Years ago, Mary Anne came to visit one day and wanted to bring something special to spoil my children -- they were quite young at the time. And she spoiled them with pieces of this rich cake served with scoops of ice cream. She also gave me the recipe, but I had never made the cake.

This occasion seemed like the perfect excuse to make this rich cake, but I needed several ingredients. And I needed those cheese pizzas.

So Saturday morning after piano lesson, I rode my bike to the Acme and bought the pizzas, cake mix, chocolate pudding, chocolate chips, and a half gallon of ice cream. That was a lot to stuff in my back pack. The ice cream was especially cold against my back as I rode home.

Before her soccer game, my daughter helped make the batter and layer the batter with chocolate chips into the bundt pan.

After the cake baked and cooled, my oldest boy got a lesson in how to make butter frosting. I showed him how to drizzle the icing on the cake; he got to eat the leftover frosting. Lucky guy.

We had not been at our friends' house very long when the door bell rang. It was their next door neighbor. She came to ask Nancy for two scallions. I recognized her. She was a friend of Mary Anne, the very same Mary Anne whose chocolate cake we had made for dessert.

This seemed like more than just a mere coincidence. I felt like my old life as an academic had intersected with my mom life. My mom life felt more real.

Later that evening after a wonderful spicy Thai dinner, we sliced the cake generously, added scoops of vanilla ice cream, and everyone ate -- the kids wolfed down the dessert but the adults savored it slowly. There was half a cake left over. My friend and I divided the remainder between us. And on Sunday night, my children enjoyed a second piece!

Remembering through Pictures

Tonight I spent the better part of an hour going through files of photos from our summer vacation to Germany and Switzerland. Now, don't misunderstand. This is not a yearly trip. We traveled to Germany to celebrate my husband's mother's 80th birthday and to have a family reunion.

But looking through those pictures reminded me of what a wonderful time we had as a family. We walked almost everyday through the pine trees and watched for deer and picked raspberries. And for a few days, we hiked through the Alps. On those days, we would take a gondola up into the mountains and then follow the trails as they wound higher through alpine meadows and revealed one vista after another.

This picture was taken at a glacier near the Jungfrau. 10 years ago, this glacier crept all the way down the valley. If you look at the picture, the glacier would have filled the entire background.

Not any more.

Now it has shrunk, receding up to the mountain peak, and leaving a trail of rocks and debris.

But enough of the eco-lecture.

Walking up to the glacier demanded stamina and nerve. Often we walked a mere foot from a precipitous drop. I was glad my children were older and could be trusted (relatively) to walk leaning into the mountain side. I kept saying, "5 feet between you and next person." I did not want anyone to fall and take some one else along to the bottom of the deep valley.

So now I look at these pictures and flash back to a moment in time when we were surrounded by "the grandeur of God."

A Day of Busy-ness

It is almost eleven o'clock and we have just finished watching the debate between McCain and Obama.

We hurried the children off to bed with hugs and admonitions. My husband is downstairs checking the various live blogs for reaction to the debate. And for me? I am satisfied with the debate. I think my guy acquitted himself admirably.

I am also satisfied that I got so much grading done between dinner and the debate. That relieves my mind -- but I still owe the seniors their rewritten college essays. That will come.

And I have posted a blog after a long hiatus, fulfilling a promise made yesterday but not yet kept to two attentive students. Perhaps a picture will come later in the week.

So this day was busy but it ends with a calm and peace for which I am thankful.

The Summer -- A Review

This summer I had such a long list of books to read and ended up getting very little read. I did read several books about the Middle East, Frankenstein, The Enchantress of Florence, and not much else. So where did the hours go? Day dreaming, yes. Working on various projects, yes. Renovating the kitchen, yes. Vacation, yes. Time with the kids, yes. Lots of swim meets, yes. Lots of time with friends. Hosting my 90-year-old grandmother for a week, yes.

Indeed, the summer seemed to be a time to reconnect with real people instead of books.

I did spend an inordinate amount of time in our new vegetable garden. I would spend the morning weeding or typing up plants or watering. But every night starting in July, I would go outside and cut fresh lettuce to make a salad. And now I am cutting basil to make fresh pesto. There are still a few tomatoes turning red in the late fall sun, but not many. I need to find my old recipe for chocolate cake made with pureed green tomatoes.

So on the reading front, the summer was not memorable, but life is not all about books.

Renewal of Spring

Earlier today one of my students surprised me by asking "Why haven't you posted lately on your blog."

That was a first and tonight I clicked on the link to this blog and discovered how right he was. The last entry was dated in February.

I have read a few books but not as many as some people might think. Some folks think I read all the time because I teach English and also have a fancy degree. But that is not so. Demands of family and profession limit the time I can actually read. Often during the school year, I don't read new books. I reread old friends because at the end of the day, I am too tired to focus on an unfamiliar plot, or to meet characters I don't already know very well. I love rereading books because I always find something new, something that creates echoes of association.

And in some ways, the book being reread is new because I am not the same person I was when I first read the book. For example, when I first read Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night" I focused on the character of Viola and her hidden love of Orsino. I imagined being her -- trying to live a double life as a man, trying to fit in. Now as I read the play, I focus on Feste and Antonio because both seem to be wanderers through the world who must survive by their agile wits, and who are willing to endanger themselves for friends. I have moved past the drama of love and into a more platonic realm.

Also today a different student asked what book I would want with me on a desert island. Certainly not the "Bible." I would want a collection of all of Shakespeare's work or Chaucer or maybe Tolkien. But scholarly editions with lots of notes, commentary, and discussion so I could have a dialogue with not just Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Tolkien but all those whose interpretations frame the texts. No, I take that back. I would still want the huge scholarly tome, but I would not read the commentary. I would stay with the sweep and scope of the original texts. There is where the truth lies and not in the ragings of various critics.

So now I have updated this blog and maybe this will satisfy the first student who announced my truancy and surprised me with his curiosity.

Istanbul as a Setting for Mystery

This mystery by Jenny White is her first novel after a number of non-fiction books on Turkish society and history. She supposedly has a professorship in Anthropology at BU. The book was saturated with intimate details of Turkish dress, customs, and historical detail that made it a true pleasure to read. The reticence of some of the dialogue and description was refreshing after some of the more blowsy prose I have been reading.
The main protagonists is Kamil Pasha who must solve the murder of a European woman, but then gets entangled in an earlier murder of another governess and late nineteenth-century Turkish politics.
I like this book well enough that I will watch for the next in the series of Kamil Pasha novels.