Redecorating

I've been redecorating in anticipation of the new baby. "WHAAAAT?!?" you say, "I didn't know you were pregnant!!!" Well, that's because I'm not. Neither is anyone in my immediate family. No, this isn't a flesh-and-blood kind of baby - it's an intellectual one. A brain child, as it were. And maybe even something that might become my work, for the next little while.

No, I'm not going to tell you what it is quite yet. I think part of the fun of having a baby is waiting for the surprise of finding out what it is - in human babies, whether it's a boy or a girl, in this case, well… But I will tell you, soon.

However, what my point is right now is that I've been redecorating, my website, that is. I've been looking at new ways of layout for the page, making a new background, giving it a new look. As a matter of fact, I've considered moving house entirely - moving the blog from Blogger to Wordpress, which seems to be a more congenial venue for generating traffic. But I'm not sure I can pull it off; my tech skills are not the greatest. I have my resident nerds who can advise me, but they know more about how to write webpages, not how non-tech nerds like myself can deal with them. So I don't know how well all this will work.

Suffice to say, you might see some changes around here in the next little while. Don't worry, it'll all be good (I hope). And in the end, there'll be some exciting news to share.

Incidentally, I've been dreaming about babies rather often lately. For some reason, frequently they're naked babies. Last night's episode featured one with an overflowing diaper - yeah, I know, eeew. But my dreams don't ask for my opinions before they play out in my sleep. I just hope this isn't prophetic about said brain child. Whose arrival, I might add, I very much look forward to.

Life, the Universe, and New Babies. Stay tuned for further announcements.

Punch

I have this highly scientific, intellectual term for things that move me: they've got punch. No, not the magenta-coloured fruit drink that comes in cans of frozen concentrate. Or the equivalent, somewhat higher-class version mixed with rum that Mary Poppins takes from her medicine spoon (roll those rrrr's: "Rrrrum Punch!"), although the latter probably would have the kind of punch I'm talking about. I mean the kind of punch that socks you in the solar plexus, knocks out your breath for just a moment. In a good way, of course.

I don't know if anyone else uses that term, so I'm not sure if when I say something has punch, people actually understand me. The thing is that I haven't found any better term for that quality. I first came up with it when I was looking at art - actually, it might well have been my own. I've pulled off a few pieces that I liked, and when I tried to describe to myself why, I realised it was because they had that quality, had punch. Not too many, mind you - but a few. It's one of the most satisfying things when I create a piece with punch. I haven't painted or sculpted much lately (funny how grad school takes over your life and sucks out all your creative juices), but I'm sure if I spent a lot of time working on my art, the number of punch-y pieces would eventually increase quite a bit. See, that's what sets apart "real" artists from the dilettantes - real artists have work with punch. And the better they get, the more regular the punch.

Punch is not just found in visual arts, but also in something like this piece of writing by my friend Christopher Bunn, where he talks about joy in spite of difficulties. It's in poems that just knock you flat, because they say it so very precisely - whatever "it" is. It's in a musical composition that moves you to tears even if you don't know why.

So, if you ever show me a piece of art or writing or music you did, and I tell you it's got punch, know that you've been given one of the highest compliments I can bestow. Something with punch is more than just beautiful or skillfully executed, it's got content that moves me. Thankfully, it's not a very rare quality, I've seen it many times. It's not cheap; it does take skill, but more than that, it takes investment on the part of the artist or writer. In fact, perhaps it is that which comes through, the person of the creator, which reaches out and touches something in me.

Punch is hard to explain, which is also why I have yet to find a better, more sophisticated word to replace it. It's a quality I know when I see it, but I cannot tell you (or even myself) ahead of time how to achieve it. At least not yet. Maybe consistent punch comes with experience.

Life, the Universe, and Pieces with Punch. I know it when I see it.

Van Gogh: punchiest painter ever

The Power of Music

I was feeling kind of down this morning, for a number of reasons. It's morning, it got cloudy, the political situation in our province is not good at the moment. Especially the latter. Politics really gets me down. And much as I try to stay away from it, in this case it directly affects me, so I can't. Ergo, frustration and depression.

And then a friend shared a video clip on Facebook (I'll try to embed the link). It's a group of orthodox Jewish men singing, a capella, around a table (at Seder, maybe?). It's a five-minute movie, and it hit me straight in the heart. Hit me, and lifted my spirits. I don't understand the words to their song, don't even know what language they're singing in - Yiddish, probably - but the sound cut straight through the gloom that surrounded me today. I don't know what it is about those minor keys and the strong beat of Jewish music, but it grabs me like no other and makes me want to start dancing the grapevine.

And that's the power of music. It bypasses all those intellectual barriers, the thoughts and ideas that crowd around us, and goes right for the emotional solar plexus. It crosses international, cultural and linguistic boundaries. And it has the power to soothe, to cheer, to comfort. Martin Luther said that "Once sung is thrice prayed" (which is why he wrote a great number of hymns for the purpose) - it's that powerful. It can express our hearts like nothing else can, even, or perhaps especially, when words fail or when we do not even know we need the expression. That's what I experienced today. I needed to hear that music today, and I didn't even know it.

Life, the Universe, and the Power of Music. It lifted me out of the clouds today.

Addendum: after I posted this to Facebook, another friend of mine managed to track the singers down on Youtube. Apparently it's the Shira Choir, from the States, and the song is called "Im Hashem Lo Yivneh Bayis" and was sung at a Bar Mitzvah. And here it is on Youtube:

Ten Favourite Reads

I was just nominated by a friend (who just happened to be the supervising prof for my Master's thesis) to take part in the "Ten Favourite Reads" challenge. So I rose to it (the challenge, I mean). I had to resist the urge to primarily list serious works of literature in order to make myself look good to the academics via whose postings I received the challenge, and stop myself from feeling self-conscious about including Georgette Heyer and Rosamunde Pilcher in that list. Well, actually, Pilcher didn't make the Top-10 list, sad to say - but more on that in a minute. So here it is, the honest list of ten favourite books. In fact, I couldn't pick just ten favourite books - more than half the list would have been taken up with Austen, she did write six novels. So I just picked my favourites of the favourites: ten favourite authors, and then the one story I might, by a slim margin, like better than their other works. Here goes, in no particular order:

Jane Austen: Sense & Sensibility
Georgette Heyer: Venetia
J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
C. S. Lewis: The Horse and His Boy
Terry Pratchett: Wyrd Sisters
Dorothy L. Sayers: Gaudy Night
Agatha Christie: Murder on the Links
Ellis Peters: A Morbid Taste for Bones
L. M. Montgomery: The Blue Castle
Brothers Grimm: "Snow White and Rose Red"

I'm sure you're shocked and amazed at the list; you had no idea I like Austen and Heyer and the Brothers Grimm. Yeah, well.

But then, I ran into a problem: there were others (and some of them, yes, serious classic literature) that I also like - they're sort of my almost-favourites. So I ended up with a second list of ten, the runners-up:

Wilhelm Hauff: "Zwerg Nase"
M. M. Kaye: The Ordinary Princess
Rosamunde Pilcher: The End of Summer
Patricia C. Wrede: Dealing With Dragons
Diana Wynne Jones: The Nine Lives of Christopher Chant
Jean Little: From Anna
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Die Leiden des jungen Werther
George Elliot: Middlemarch
Edith Nesbit: Harding's Luck
Carola Dunn: Smuggler's Summer

And I'm sure if I kept going, I could end up with a third and fourth and fifth list, ad infinitum. Or, if I actually spelled out all of my favourite books by all these favourite authors, there'd be over a hundred on the first list alone. But there's limits. Really, you have to quit somewhere. So that's where.

Life, the Universe, and Favourite Reads. What's yours?

Naming

I woke up at 2:30 this morning, and as I went down into the kitchen for a drink, I saw the stars winking at me through the window. So I stepped out onto the balcony, and was overwhelmed. The display was dazzling last night.

A friend of mine talked some time ago about the importance of naming, how the pleasure of experiencing a garden, for example, is increased by being able to name the plants. I get that. I enjoy being able to call weeds by their name when I yank them out ("Take that, evil cranesbill! Out you go, knapweed!"), but even better, knowing friendly plants ("There's rosemary, that's for remembrance." - okay, sorry, that's off topic.). Naming something gives you a little bit of ownership over it, or perhaps some kinship with it.

And so last night, what drew me out on the balcony was the Pleiades, das Siebengestirn - the Sevenstars, that clear cluster which in this hemisphere and at our latitude (50°N, if you must know) is not commonly visible earlier in the year just after dark, so it's a bit of a treat to be able to see it. It was almost directly east, about half-way up in the sky. And just over from it was Capella, in Auriga. In July, around 10:00 PM, it appears just over the horizon to the north; it's exceptionally bright, and it twinkles red and blue - really! - so that when I first saw it some years ago I spent quite some time arguing with my brothers-in-law who were visiting about whether it was a star or a satellite. (I can't remember what my side of the argument was, but looking it up soon turned up the facts of the matter - and the name.)

First I put on my glasses last night, then I went for the binoculars and the star chart. And so I became acquainted with Perseus. No relation to Percy Jackson - well, actually, yes relation to Percy Jackson, I believe he's named after the constellation. Or both the constellation and the teen demigod are named after the Greek hero, whose deeds I can't remember. Perseus (the constellation) is really bright, easy to spot. And it pleases me that I now know another name of a star cluster. It makes the wonder of a brilliant night sky that much deeper - and yet more intimate.

Life, the Universe, and Gazing at the Stars. I love them more for knowing their names.

Writer's Fatigue

I had great good intentions, I did. I was going to get back to blogging frequently and regularly, and be all erudite and profound and entertaining (maybe even all three at the same time) at least once a week or so. But, somehow, it didn't happen. Summer is trickling away on me, and blog posts are not accumulating.

You see, the fact of the matter is, I've got Writer's Fatigue. I'm tired. Tired of cranking out words, being articulate. Tired of sitting at my computer, putting letters on a screen, then rereading them, changing them, fixing them, rearranging them, and then doing it all again (and again and again). I just finished my big final project for my Master's degree, forty-six pages plus references (if you want to read about it, or even read the whole thing, go over to quillandqwerty, it's got the link on it). And it was the cumulation of two-and-a-half years of grad school - reading, studying, researching - and writing, writing, writing, at least one big paper, usually two or three, each semester. That's an awful lot of words. So now, it seems, my writing ability has trickled out of my ears. My wordsmithing quota has been used up for the time being.

So perhaps, what I'll do instead is give you some pictures. Each one worth a thousand words, no? (Gee whiz, I could have just submitted fifteen photos for my final project, and been done with it... But no, probably not.) So here, for your edification, are some pictures from our recent holiday on the West Coast. I love the Pacific, it's one of my favourite places in the whole world. You're welcome.

Life, the Universe, Writer's Fatigue - and the beauties of the Canadian West Coast.

Jammin'

raspberry jam at the beginning of the process

I've got a pot of apricot-chili barbecue sauce bubbling on the stove. But as I don't yet know how it's going to turn out (I messed with the recipe), I'm not going to tell you about that right now. I have been meaning to tell you about jam, though, cunningly illustrated with photos from my last jammin' session (the kind on the stove, not with a guitar).

all of ONE jar of raspberry jam!

The event in question involved raspberries and black currants, both from our garden. Well, the currants are strictly speaking from the neighbour's garden, but they hang over the fence, and the neighbours are glad if we clean off our side of the bushes. The raspberries are genuinely from our garden, planted just three years ago. The bushes grew quite nice and big, but unfortunately, they got shorted on water while they were fruiting this year, so the berries were for the most part too tiny to pick. Ah well. I did get half a pound (200g) of berries off the bushes (ooh, aah!), and turned them into jam. That's right. It made precisely one jar, and I hope it's tasty (I also hope to buy some more raspberries at the farmer's market, if there's any left, and make more of the stuff, as it's popular around here).

Raspberry jam is one of the easiest jams to make. The biggest amount of labour is in picking the berries, actually - once that's done, you just wash them, dump them in the pot with sugar, boil, and you're done. To be specific: I make my jam by weight, European style. Five parts berries, four parts sugar, so 1kg of berries to 800g of sugar, or, in this year's case, 200g berries to 160g sugar. For jam, I never use commercial pectin, it works quite well without, and I like the taste much better that way (jelly is a different matter; I have yet to manage a jelly without pectin. I might try it with the concord grapes this fall.).

a rolling boil

The basic jammin' technique is as follows: put the berries in the pot with the sugar, stir. Start boiling on high heat (jam always runs on high heat, never turn it down), stir a lot. Bring to a rolling boil, which means it boils so hard you can't stir it down (see picture). A rolling boil rises really high in the pot, to about twice the height of the original mix, so leave lots of room in the pot. Boil for a while (it varies according to recipe - for raspberries, just a few minutes; strawberries and peaches, more like fifteen minutes). Skim off the foam and put in a cup; it's really tasty on toast. Take pot off burner. Immediately ladle jam into scrupulously clean containers. With jam, I don't bother either sterilising the jars, or hot-water-bath processing them; jam is preserved by its sugar content, not a vacuum seal like other canned produce. I do use the screw rings with the metal lids (which I boil in hot water) and put them on immediately; the heat from the jam is usually enough to seal the lid to keep dust, bugs and air out (the latter will dry the jam out, which isn't so lovely). But you could even just tie some waxed paper or cellophane over the top; it just wouldn't keep as long as in properly airtight jars because the top of the jam will dry out eventually. (As far as keeping quality goes, this kind of jam in well-closed containers could literally last for several years on a cool dark basement shelf. It's best in the first year, and generally it gets eaten long before then, but, you know, just sayin'.)

jelly test (see the drip?)

One more thing: with many jams and jellies, you know they're boiled enough when you can do the jelly test, i.e. when a drop of jelly running off the spoon sort of hangs together (see picture). With raspberry, that's not the case; it'll be completely runny when you put it in the jars, but as soon as it cools it sets up nice and firm-ish. As I said, it's the easiest jam to make - no pitting, peeling, stemming or other fussing with the fruit, and it pretty much always turns out. Well, so far it did for me.

black currant skimmings

The black currant jam needed a bit of a different technique, and it didn't turn out terribly well this year - too runny. But still very tasty. I use the recipe from Marguerite Patten's book Step by Step Cookery (it's Brits, from 1963, quite amusing). It calls for 1 lb. black currants, 3/4 pint water, and 1 1/4 lb. sugar;  you boil the fruit and water first until the currants are soft, and then proceed as above. As I said, mine turned out a bit too runny this year; it should be really great on pancakes.

Life, the Universe, and This Year's Jammin'. Come on over and try some.

the completed glory