Winter break with parents

Mom (edge in voice, looking at 3/4 empty bottle of organic red wine from Italy): Did you drink all that wine tonight?

Heather: Nooooo.

Mom (visibly relaxing)

Heather: Tether drank it.

Mom: (chortle)

. . .

. . .

I'm so glad we've come to an understanding here.

Roma and lead poisoning in Kosovo

Another heartbreaking story from Europe.

Anti-Roma Violence and Hostility in the European News

So if I keep my eye off the international news for even a few minutes, I always regret it. The news from Europe for Roma is . . . not good.

First off, there's the situation in Italy. We'll be talking about that in a panel at U of M on December 10 at noon. I haven't seen information go out about the event yet, but if you're interested, let me know and I'll keep you in the loop.

Then, in early November there was a killing of Roma in northern Hungary, probably ethnically motivated. It got a brief mention in the BBC News and the International Herald Tribune.

Meanwhile, in the Czech Republic, according to the European Network against Racism, "At a march organised in the town of Litvinov in the Czech Republic on 17 November, about 500 demonstrators linked to the far-right Czech Workers’ Party chanted anti-Roma slogans and threw stones, firecrackers and petrol bombs with the intention of attacking the Roma community." From all accounts and images, including CzechNews, and the BBC News video footage, the incident looks terrifying.

And the nastiness spills over into the virtual world, too, with racist facebook groups organizing ethnic violence on the popular networking site.

It's never seen the sun, it only comes up when the moon is on the run

I was just reading in Martha Stewart's delicious holiday issue all about amaryllis flowers, and now Park Seed has more than a dozen different varieties on their site . . . I think I've fallen in love with their Cherry Nymph.

LIFE magazine's historical photograph collection

Wow, this is great. Life Magazine has just made its collection of historical photos available online in an archive hosted by Google. Only about 20 percent of the LIFE collection is currently online. The entire archive, comprising about 10 million photos, will be added over the next few months. Above, an image from 1938 of a family living in a rural shack in Poland. Below, a family in a British industrial area. For those of us interested in poverty and its photographic depiction, this is a goldmine.

Oh, the joys of being a graduate student instructor

You know, I find that being in grad school this many years has really changed my approach to dress when I get up in the morning. Instead of, "Do I look cute?" the questions become:

"Is my body covered adequately?"
"Will I be unbearably hot/cold?"
"Have I avoided looking like an ENORMOUS freak?"
"Is the odor of the clothes I have taken off my bedroom floor minimal enough not to cause offense?"
"Can I be REASONABLY confident that I've done everything to avoid that when my undergraduate students run into each other in the bar, at a frat party, or in the ladies room, they won't be conversing about my body and clothes?" (I know some of them will, no matter what I do.)

sigh. I wish I had the time and money to buy a new wardrobe, lose 30 pounds, reliably use my anti-acne, anti-psoriasis, and anti-aging skin treatments and go to the gym.

But today, at least I am showered and no one can see my ass crack.

That's something, at least.

Guns, burning crosses, angry white men, and other stupid shit.

Along with all the people who are celebrating a new era in American history, are those who are terrified that their grasp on power is loosening, and are pulling all kinds of stupid shit in response to the election. 

Like, for example, the people who thought it was a good idea to burn a cross on an Indian-American guy's lawn in New Jersey because his wife had created a banner congratulating President elect Barack Obama on his victory.

And, for instance, the angry, violent gang of white men who, encountering a high-school-aged Liberian-American Muslim on Staten Island on election night, shouted "Obama!" and proceeded to beat him with a baseball bat.

And then there are those who are just threatened by the possibility of change they embodied in President-elect Obama, even though some of them nominally support change. There's something a little terrifying to me about the fact that America is arming itself with record speed even though Obama confirms our right to bear arms. Glenn Parshal, a gun retailer in Las Vegas says, "One of the strangest things that I've had happen the past few weeks, is I've had a lot of people come in here wearing Obama buttons and Obama t-shirts, in here to buy guns, they tell me they're in here to buy 'em before he bans 'em." 

I need to follow this up with a photograph from the country road I take home from Ann Arbor. The local resident there initially set up a wooden, spray-painted sign informing passing motorists that "SOCIALISTS ARE THIEVES." Now, he's added two more, including one warning us to "LOAD UP ON AMMO."

My horoscope today tells me: "Be smart by rejecting anyone who has a negative and self sabotaging attitude. These people will only pull you down to their sad and lonely victimized level." This is funny to me, in light of the past week.

vlad and friend boris presents 'Song for Sarah' for mrs. Palin

corruption within

main hall, originally uploaded by vivid tangerine.

an image i've always wondered about, and never seen . . . my friend writes about it beautifully here.

Preparing to make history

I just got all fixed up for voting tomorrow, identifying the candidates who will be on my ballot in my wee little town. I had thought I'd probably get more information in the mail, like I did in the past in California, but all I got was from the GEO at University of Michigan.

It took a while to figure out who was running for congress and for the house in my town. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there is just a Republican on the ballot for state representative here.

Anyway, I'm ready. Now just nine more hours to wait. Hopefully the lines won't be too crazy first thing in the morning here. I'm inclined to agree with folks who are arguing that states that don't allow for early voting are effectively doing the same as charging a poll tax for people who want to vote in person, if you have to stand and wait for several hours to cast your vote.

Ah, a friend just sent helpful information -- there's a website that will show you your ballot ahead of time if you're a Michigan voter, and links to lots of information. It's PUBLIUS. I'll never get over the whole romanticization of ancient Graeco-Roman civilization as the original seat of democracy in light of its profound inequalities, but never mind the name. It's super useful.

I just love killing those animals.

"Yes, yes, I understand, we have the equivalent of Joe the Plumber in France, it's called, 'Marcel, the guy with bread under his armpit,' oui," says the Quebecois comedian Sarah Palin believes to be Nicholas Sarkozy.

Bubb Rubb and Lil Sis

You s'posed to be up cooking breakfast or something, by then, so that's like an alarm clock: woo WOO!

And the REMIX VERSION, hilarious but with some nudity involved, just as a warning.

It's coming . . .

So soon, so soon. Are you as nervous and excited and hopeful and distracted as I am?

Yes We Span campaign

Yay! My American expat friends in Hungary made Yahoo News.

I'm reading and thinking about families and domestic space in ancient cities. I started with Ancient Sippar (c.1750-1595 B.C.) in Babylonia, and now I'm reading about families in the height of ancient Rome (200 B.C.-A.D. 200). . . There's a reason I'm not an archaeologist, but I have to admit that some of this stuff is fascinating. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill's article on Domus and Insulae in Rome sent me to Google when I read the line that the Antiche Stanze exhibition was of an extensive area of housing that emerged in the late 1940s when the new metro station was being installed in front of Termini (Wallace-Hadrill 2003:10), and that it had been demolished and all that is left is the photographs and private notebooks of an archaeologist. And sure enough, there's an online Powerpoint presentation with a few photographs. . .I love the interwebs.

Fall pleasures

I think I'll be able to harvest my sweet potato plant pretty soon! I'm not sure what really to expect, since it's the first year I've grown sweet potatoes. But I love them, and I'm pretty excited.

The drive home from Ann Arbor is prettier every day. Despite the gray. I don't know if I'll ever quite get used to the breathtaking beauty of the autumn in the East, having grown up on the West coast. Or, for that matter, to the delicious smell of the air in the fall. It's . . .pregnant.

I just harvested all my remaining basil leaves from the plants in the garden and made a whole huge thing of pesto, a slight variation on this recipe. My house smells completely amazing.

I also have huge pots with my pineapple sage and lemon verbena, and also a little pot of cinnamon basil that I've just rescued from the garden in anticipation of our first freeze of the year.

I did some internet research on winterizing the herb garden and hope that I've prepared adequately with layers of cloth over many -- though not all -- of the plants. I'll see tomorrow how everything looks. Perhaps I should have clipped all the parsley too, but I'm hoping that a couple layers of cloth will be sufficient for the night.

I have discovered a couple quite nice low-sulfite wines they sell at Trader Joes now for under $6. Which is pretty awesome for someone with a sulfite sensitivity, because up until recently, the only drinkable bottles were $11-13, which meant that I didn't drink much wine. But tonight I brought a bottle over to my friend A.'s house after teaching and taking care of a few quick items of business at the university, and we visited for a bit, drank some wine, and ate some cheese before I came back to my cottage. We might make it a Friday routine. :)

Good news to report, I've been very productive in my work recently, and I'm finally getting back to being on top of things. After a very difficult year, that's a huge relief. Now I just need to get a handle on my dissertation project and get some grants written convincingly enough to get support for my research abroad . . . no small feat. (fingers crossed)

Fall has settled in here in Michigan, and it's stunningly beautiful. The air is crisp and fresh, and when the sun is shining it's glorious to be alive, with the leaves turning and the foliage thinning just enough to give an even more spectacular view of the river when you drive Huron River Drive. I transplanted most of the zinnias in my garden so I now have a charming and cheerful pathway lined with pink blooms and a profusion of mint that leads to my cottage. I ate the most tart, crisp, delicious local apple this morning while I took a break from gardening.

Somehow I don't even mind I have almost 30 papers to grade. It's nice that they're about literature . . . it's a welcome change to be thinking about Pushkin and Lermentov for a semester.

Bipartisan Approach to Hotness

Hah!!!

"The Other Hawaii"

Interesting stuff about Hawaiian independence movement.

Media pics

James Hill of the New York Times has just created an interesting photo essay about Russia and the way of life of rural farmers, called "Russia: The Land". It's a bit romantic at times, but the images are beautiful and give a picture of Russia we don't get to see much anymore in the West.

I also highly recommend the SNL parody of an interview with Sarah Palin. Brilliant.

Oooh, a film that walks the line between fiction and reality, dealing with contemporary French teenagers. MUST SEE . . . . (I had a dream last night that I moved to New York that involved corruption and time travel and a whole lot of baggage. . . sometimes I so wish I could be in the place where things always happen first. . .)

Lazyman's paradise

YAY! A simple program to put my Google Calendar into my system tray. Even works for me with the dreaded Windows Vista. And Yahoo Widgets, hooray.

Battles over democratic citizenship in Europe

The European Commission has come to the bewildering decision to support the mass fingerprinting of Roma in Italy, a decision which the European Roma Rights Center and the Open Society Institute Justice Initiative have challenged the EC to defend.

I am so disturbed by this whole situation in Italy.

(See also EU Roma Policy Coalition.)

Anthropology of the Web 2.0 -- Michael Wesch on YouTube

Michael Wesch, Assistant professor of Anthropology at Kansas State University, has created another fascinating contribution to YouTube, this time a lecture to the Library of Congress integrating video into a highly informative and thought-provoking multimedia presentation about the social world of YouTube. I spent my rainy Saturday morning watching the whole thing, and apart from the fact that I can't get the song "Numa Numa" out of my head, I'm thrilled that I did, because it makes me really excited about how anthropologists can engage Web 2.0 in new ways to guide our products as well as our research design.

Celebrating Barack in Hungary

I'd been waiting a long time for someone to make this pun! Finally, Americans in Hungary for Obama are hosting the "Peachfest" in Budapest. Barack in Hungarian means peach, so Obama's first name has lovely sweet associations for Hungarian speakers, if a bit funny. Oszibarack is peach, sargabarack is apricot, kopasz barack is nectarine. Mmmmm, Barack.

New Czech blog about integration in urban space in Europe. Hmmmm. Could be interesting.

Saakashvili speaks with Al Jazeera - 15 Aug 2008

I've been frustrated by what I've heard in the media here on what is happening in Georgia, which tends to be repetitive, shallow, and lacking a sense of historicity. Georgia is a place I haven't paid a lot of attention to up until recently, but any changes in the role of Russia in the lives of its neighbors to the west attracts my interest. So this lengthy interview with President Saakashvili was quite fascinating to me. So was this BBC report about Ukraine extending a technological helping hand to the West, presumably for potential future Russian "adventures" (to use Sakashvili's language).

For a blogger recap of what's been going on, check out Shashalnikya on livejournal.

The latest episode of Italian xenophobia

"The reaction to the death of these children goes beyond anything that has happened before. The incident has exposed a long-held social realism in our country: that many working-class people think the Roma no better than animals, and the government is using this xenophobia to win votes and popularity. People are ashamed. The deaths of these girls has come to represent something more, perhaps a battle for Italy's soul."
-- Francesca Saudino, a campaigning Naples-based lawyer with Osservazione, a Roma rights organization, quoted in The Observer in an article on the recent (non)reaction in Italy to the deaths of two teenaged Romani girls on a beach in Naples

Oh man, this is funny, and so very clever . . .

The larger point, though, is really quite scary.

Livescribe Smartpen

Oooooh, I want it . . . .

. . . and I've been coveting my friend's Nokia internet tablet, too.

Russian troops in Georgia

oh shit. i hope my friend doing work in georgia is going to be okay.

Prisons, Torture, and Mental Health

For those of you in Michigan, there will be a rally and teach-in on Wednesday, August, 6, in Lansing, in commemoration of the 2-year anniversary of the death of Timothy Joe Souders. For those of you who are not familiar with this story, Liz Spikol gave a clear and poignant picture of the story on her blog a couple years ago.

The emphasis of the upcoming march on Lansing is prison torture, and the deeply problematic continuing practices of prisoner segregation, restraint, and water withholding. These are very important issues, but Timothy's case also highlights the obvious need for improved attention to health care, especially mental health care, both in the United States at large and specifically in the justice system. I encourage you also to explore the information at Mental Health America, which promotes the advancement of mental health policy and education in our country, and will facilitate your active involvement as a concerned citizen.

Today, I taught about the history of European colonialism in Africa to two African-American freshman athletes, taught about the nature of Athabaskan, American, and Nepali notions of reciprocity through a discussion of Velma Wallis's book Two Old Women with a group of Korean and Korean-American eleven- and twelve-year-olds, and searched the archives of a Pakistani newspaper for urban development articles in the early 1950s.

I got completely drenched in the rain cycling back and forth on my way to tutoring, and managed to get through the course by changing into my "Consent is Sexy" t-shirt I happened to have hiding in my pickup truck, which looks, without question, like there is a hobo living in it. Luckily I also had my wonderful kelly-green University of Bemidji hooded sweatshirt to wear over it so I didn't scandalize the poor kids.

Riding back home along Huron River Drive tonight, under the cool, green canopy of trees, I saw two pairs of deer and a muskrat or river otter (I was going too fast to tell for sure).

I had a simple supper of tomato soup, lush salad with walnuts, blue cheese, dried cherries and balsamic vinegarette on baby greens, and rotisserie Amish chicken, and then amused myself while reading my email afterwards with the knowledge that 9/10 of the secret anti-aging foods Martha Stewart recommends are things I eat nearly daily.

There's no doubt that this life, however crazy it is, is a full one.

Animal sightings around the house

I never did share this photograph of a little friend I saw beside my door one day in June. I hardly would have noticed him if he hadn't rustled the leaves as he was making his way through. I think I scared him half to death trying to capture him on film.

Planting, Ranting

So, I've done a bunch of work in my garden that I can't wait to tell you about, even though the photos won't really do it justice until tomorrow. I was feeling headachey this afternoon and didn't feel like sleeping yet, so I went to the garden to work instead. I spent hours out there!

This first one, though blurry, gives the nicest sense of the color of the new plants, lovely bright native plants I found by the roadside and transplanted to this spot across the way, which up until yesterday was a mess of buckthorn plantain (Plantago lanceolata), crabgrass and other weeds.

Now, though, it's got butterfly weed, wild phlox (I think that's what that pink one is), black-eyed susan, echinacea (in the back toward the top, not blooming yet), lilies (some orange variety), and a variety of succulents I haven't identified. I also planted seeds for lupines and from some kind of deep bluish/purplish flowering plant Umlud and I came upon on a walk in one of the Ann Arbor parks, in the area between the echinacea and the other plants. We'll see what the mystery plant is eventually if the seeds take. Perhaps Caryopteris? I do love a good mystery.

I've been painstakingly transplanting the lilies from farther back on the garden plot, beneath a lilac tree, in an area so overrun with mosquitoes, it's impossible to be back there to enjoy them. They're not happy with the transition at this point, but I think I'll have beautiful blooms next year, once they've had a chance to settle into their new locale.

The succulents have been growing down my neighbor's rock garden on the other side, and creeping into the bed beneath, so I'm transplanting them from there and from where it's taking over chunks of the lawn. There are three different kinds, apart from the purslane (more on that below!)

I also planted morning glory along the chain-link fence a few days ago, along with sweet-pea. If I have my way, the whole place will be exploding with blooms pretty soon, and the exposed metal fence will be a distant memory. I already see the morning glory rising out of the earth and spreading its leaves like little green angel wings. Tomorrow I'll get some more shots of them, and the amazingly quickly growing zucchini plants, and the sweet-peas that are starting to pop up on the other side of the garden.

Below, with the terrible lighting of my camera flash, you can see the pattern of the rock garden with succulents that I've started, dangerously into the territory of the 40-foot area zoned for our subdivision's road, but probably safe unless two cars meet on our gravel road and are in too much of a hurry to take care. There's a margin of at least a couple feet between where the actually used road ends and the little rocks & plants start. But, folks around here in the country have a tendency to drive onto the edge of the lawn without a great deal of concern, when there's not room for the two SUVs on the small gravel roads. One of the oddities of this part of the country. Anyhoo, below, that's what I've got on the side.

And below, this is what I've done in the upper area, leading toward the chain-link fence.

Unfortunately that little wooden retaining wall is coming apart; I'll have to mention that to my landlords and see if they want to do anything about it. It's not holding back a lot of soil, so they may not be too concerned.

And, I've been doing a lot of thinking about weeds and weeding. So I wrote a dogmatic little piece tonight.

Purslane: Weeds, Food, and the Politics and Ethics of Nomenclature

THINKING ABOUT WEEDS, READING ABOUT WEEDS, DIGGING ABOUT WEEDS
Now that I've been gardening more, I've also been reading a ton online about plants and gardening.

Today I was reading more about weeds, which I've been thinking about a lot lately, as I become more familiar with the plants native to Michigan, the ones that are invasive, and the ones that are introduced but are not considered problematic.

WEED IDENTIFICATION RESOURCES: IMAGE GALLERIES, DATABASES
One thing I've been exploring a lot is the various weed databases that are around. Rutgers University has a really handy weed gallery with thumbnail photographs of the plants, helpful if you aren't as familiar with botany as some databases require the researcher to be. (The Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research weed identification tool, for example, though it is also very useful, asks you to specify the characteristics of a number of plant features to conclude what your weed is, which may overwhelm the neophyte gardener.) For Michigan, there's also a common weed seedlings gallery, which is, interestingly, much more comprehensive than the noxious and restricted weeds list for Michigan. (Ergonica will help you find your way to a similar list for your region, if you aren't local to MI.)

THINKING MORE IN-DEPTH ABOUT WEEDS
Today I came upon this fabulously interesting reading on weeds: course notes from a weed science course taught by Dr. Alan York at North Carolina State University. Although from an anthropological perspective, the idea of a plant "interfering with human activities" calls for some deconstruction and consideration, what's really great about the information he presents is that he deals in much more specific terms about the particular problems weeds pose to human populations than most sources I've come upon: "health hazards," "water management," "safety issues," etc. His detailed, quantified explanations of the reduced crop output of crops given particular levels of weed interference are particularly helpful for understanding the problem of weeds from his perspective.

THREATS TO BIODIVERSITY
Similarly, as someone generally concerned about the diversity of life on the planet, and with the conservation of (relatively) uncultivated land and its species, I'm chilled when I hear the Michigan State University's Invasive Species Initiative has to say about garlic mustard: "Garlic mustard is an exotic invasive plant from Europe that invades woodland habitats in North America and impacts forest biodiversity. In some woodlands, dense stands of garlic mustard in the spring threaten showy spring blooming ephemerals like spring beauty, trilliums and trout lilies. Other research points toward potentially negative impacts on timber species and forest health. Many land managers consider it to be one of the most potentially harmful and difficult to control invasive plants in the region." (See more on the Garlic Mustard Initiative, including photos, here.)

PURSLANE: THE PROBLEM OF CULTURE
But, to get back to what I mean about the deconstruction needed in thinking about weeds "interfering with human activities" (in Alan York's language), consider the example of purslane. (Thanks very much to Scrumptious, my dear friend who blogs about her CSA adventures in San Francisco, for pointing out this problem to me!) Purslane is called a "severe weed pest in vegetable crops and newly seeded turf" by the Rutgers University Agricultural Experiment Station. It gets a similar rap from most folks in the American mainstream. Yet, according to the organization Annadana, it was cultivated over 4000 years ago, and has been eaten for at least 1000 years by people in the Southwestern area of the United States. It's used by healers in the Andes, was used by Mayans in the Yucatan, and is grown as a vegetable in Africa. The Australian Naturopathic Network indicates it has been used also by Australian Aborigines, peoples in India and the Middle East.

As Rosemary Barron writes for the Weston A. Price Foundation for Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and the Healing Arts, "the FDA lists purslane as a pervasive weed (the 7th worst, worldwide) but to those of us who love its earthy, slightly acidic flavor and crisp, succulent stems and leaves, the word ‘weed’ hardly seems fair." She explains further, "Medieval herbals describe purslane as ‘cold,’ meaning that it was considered a cure for a ‘burning’ (or malfunctioning) heart and liver. Greeks call it a ‘blood-cleansing’ herb. In Mexico, purslane is considered good for diabetics. Recent research has confirmed that purslane is one of the best vegetable sources of omega-3 fatty acids, as well as carotenes and vitamin C."

The CSA folks and naturopaths are clued into the human benefits of this plant. It's gotten the attention of medical researchers as well as the New York Times food and dining section. So why does the FDA still classify it as a weed? What exactly are the human activities with which it's interfering? Stretching green lawns in front of our domiciles that offer nothing to humans or beneficial animals in the way of foodstuffs?

Moreover, why does the American Heart Association not mention purslane anywhere in its omega-3 recommendations? Given the rising cost of food and devastating environmental problems leading to concerns about transportation of food, it should be much more widely publicized that the plant most Americans are trying to weed out of their lawns could actually help save their lives by reducing their risk of coronary heart disease, without paying a single penny to a pharmaceutical company.

Promoting the home cultivation and consumption of this omega-3-rich vegetable could also circumvent the problem that the recommendations for twice-a-week fish consumption, if it actually could be afforded financially by everyone in the population (a BIG if in a society -not to mention a world- with such great wealth disparities as ours has), would so much further contribute to overfishing that it would destroy the world's fisheries.

People. It's time to think about sustainability seriously, and not to treat it as something outside the purview of health sciences. We need to think seriously about how we live, if we want to continue to do it on this planet.


SOME RELEVANT HEALTH RESEARCH:
Ezekwe, Michael O., Thomas R. Omara-Alwala, Tadesse Membrahtu. "Nutritive characterization of purslane accessions as influenced by planting date." Plant Foods for Human Nutrition. Sept 1999 v53 i3 p183(9).

Guil-Guerrero, Jose L., and Ignacio Rodriguez-Garcia. "Lipids classes, fatty acids and carotenes of the leaves of six edible wild plants." European Food Research and Technology A 209.5 (Sept 1999): 313(4).

Purslane eyed as rich food source - US weed has beneficial nutrients
Agricultural Research, Dec, 1992, by Sean Adams

Simopoulos AP. "The omega-6/omega-3 fatty acid ratio, genetic variation, and cardiovascular disease" ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF CLINICAL NUTRITION. 2008;17 Sup.1:131-134.
Simopoulos AP, Norman HA, Gillaspy JE, Duke JA. Common purslane: A source of omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants. J Am College Nutr. 1992;11:374-382.

Simopoulos AP, Norman HA, Gillaspy JE. Purslane in human nutrition and its potential for world agriculture. World Rev Nutr Diet. 1995;77:47-74.

Simopoulos AP, Salem N Jr. Purslane: a terrestrial source of omega-3 fatty acids. N Engl J Med. 1986;315:833.

Simopoulos AP, Gopalan C (Eds). Plants in Human Health and Nutrition Policy. World Rev Nutr Diet, Basel: Karger, vol. 91, 2003.

Zeghichi S, Kallithrka S, Simopoulos AP, Kypriotakis Z. Nutritional composition of selected wild plants in the diet of Crete. World Rev Nutr Diet. 2003;91:22-40.

Simopoulos AP. Omega-3 fatty acids in wild plants, seeds and nuts. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2002;11(S6):S163-S173.

Simopoulos AP. Omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants in edible wild plants. Biol Res. 2004;37:263-277.

I have questions, I have answers.

What would I do without the internet? It's such an integral part of my life. I have so many questions. It has so many answers. Like this morning, in the midst of my preparations for a 3-week cleanse and my course planning for my tutoring job (one of the 4 jobs I've got now), my curiosity and work bring me these directions:

How do I make Turkish coffee? Why, by boiling water in an ibrik and following these simple directions, naturally. (Coffee with cardamom and a little brown sugar is so much nicer than plain when you're drinking it without any cream or milk, and I prefer to keep the spices out of my Moka [where I usually make my coffee] to avoid always having to drink flavored coffee.)*

What are The Chronicles of Prydain about, and would it be appropriate reading for my challenging literature & ESL class of 11-year-old Korean girls, once we've finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone? Hmm. Maybe, maybe not.

How can I teach that same class about the Vietnam War in a way they'll understand and get something out of it? They had many questions about it as I tried to explain "hippies" and the context for The Bridge to Terabithia. I'm sure Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried would be too sexually sophisticated, Michael Herr's Dispatches too full of vulgarities for this group, who titter at the word "damn" or the word "sex," even in the sense of the distinction between male and female. Yet they're SO BORED by almost everything I bring in, except Harry Potter. I came upon this wonderful article by Peter Filene from 1999 about teaching Vietnam to children of Vietnam war vets & protestors (unfortunately, available in full only through institutional access through JSTOR). But for 11-year-old girls raised with a foot in Korea and a foot in the United States, Filene's observation that for his students, "the war has very different meanings: it is both further away and closer" is true in rather a different sense. Maybe I can take a look at Wanda Miller's book, Teaching U.S. History Through Children's Literature: Post-World War II (Through Children's Literature) to find some more ideas. And maybe the book Teaching U.S. history as mystery by David Gerwin and Jack Zevin may help, too, since it sounds good and sounds like it's got a case-study on Vietnam. Of course, since I'm not paid for prep and this is far from being my primary job, the question remains too exactly how much I can put into this . . .

Could I teach Hesse's The Journey to the East to my group of soon-to-be 6th graders? Am I reaching too far in wanting to teach them Hesse and Thoreau in my anthropologically driven English literature course on nature and survival narratives? (So far we've read Jack London's "To Build a Fire", Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat", and Athabaskan (Alaska native) writer Velma Wallis's Two Old Women, and next up is Jon Krakauer's article "Death of an Innocent" [a shorter version of the story on which his book, and the recently released film "Into the Wild" is based] Maori writer Witi Ihimaera's The Whale Rider.)

Would a nectarine tree grow in my yard? Hmm, probably not to be hardy or fruiting from a stone of fruit from COSTCO grown who-knows-where. If I spent a bit on a tree, a special cultivar called "Flamin' Fury", probably so.

What should I do with my cabbage from the Howell farmer's market? Why, make raw sauerkraut and linguine with sauteed bacon, onion, cabbage, coarse sea salt, fresh-ground pepper and nutmeg, and garden-fresh tarragon and thyme, inspired by Katrina of Daily Unadventures in Cooking, of course. This is cheating a bit, because I actually found these recipes in the past and have been meaning to make them for some time. Now if only I had a 50-gallon barrel for sauerkraut, instead of the modest brown ceramic crock I found at a garage sale and bought for this purpose (but instead have been using for a year to hold my alliums and potatoes)!

Just when am I going to stop playing and start working on my archaeology paper? Oops, that's one the internet can't answer for me. Perhaps I should go explore the question off-line.

*By the way, though, that recipe above doesn't call for NEARLY enough coffee. Very weak for a Turkish coffee, and I don't think there was even a full cup of water in my pot, since my ibrik is very small, like this one. I think THIS RECIPE looks better; I'm going to try it now, since the food coma is setting in since I ate all the pasta. Mmmm. What a lovely lazy day at home.

Garden Planting List

TO BUY SOON AND PLANT THIS FALL
Scarlet Runner Beans
Painted Lady Beans
Nero di Toscana Cabbage
Bull's Blood Beets
Detroit Dark Red Beets
Fava Beans
Clover?
Bulbous Fennel
Parsnips
Kale (Russian red/Ragged Jack)
Kale (Blue-curled Scotch)
Dwarf Siberian Kale
Radicchio, Verona Red
Filderkraut cabbage
Wormwood (as garden border, to prevent animals)
Check Washtenaw Conservation District native plant sale
Butterfly weed
Hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla; hoping for bluish lavender. . . did you know the color of the blue/pink ones depends on soil composition? aluminum and a slightly acidic pH makes blue; some interesting info on organic gardening of hydrangeas here)
Hydrangea Anabelle
Red hydrangea

SOONER?
Warm weather greens
Peppers

NEXT SPRING
Amaranth
Vietnamese Red Amaranth
Rhubarb
Joe Pye weed
Tickseed (Coreopsis)
Showy Sedum
Bee balm (seeds)
Trachelium
Catchfly
Delphinium
Matuncana Sweet pea
Pentas kaleidoscope
Penstemon
Achillea
Red hydrangea
Annabelle hydrangea

WISH LIST
'Boule de Feu' Hibiscus
Clematis
Hosta?
Lantana
Irises
Daffodils
Tulips
More Lilacs
Trellis
Blueberry bushes
Raspberries
Dragon heart geranium
Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris) 'Tower Dark Blue'
Cyclamen
Red Spider Lily (Lycoris radiata)
Bicolor butterfly bush
Peony: perhaps Buckeye Belle or 'Burma Joy' something pale pink like Madam Calot, America,
Gardenia
Park's Peony Poppy Flemish Antique (Papavar somniferum paeoniflorum)

And so much more . . .

Tools & implements wish list
Soaker hose
Mosquito head net
Composter (I use a heap right now, and it's a challenge to turn when fighting the mosquitoes) or manure fork
Garden hose reel
bow rake
pointed shovel
rain barrels
bat house

Oh! Vienna Teng is coming to Michigan again, to the Riverfolk Festival. Oh goodie, oh goodie. Anyone game? If you don't know her, listen to a couple of her incredible songs on my "Letters from Home" mix from several months ago . . .

Isn't it ironic, don't you think?

My horoscope for today gave me a bit of a chuckle.

"Emotional security is essential for the soul and financial security is necessary for peace of mind. Not many people understand Cancer’s need to feel secure in life.

Yours Spiritually,
Universal Psychic Guild"

Week 2: A long day's work in the garden.

I'm being rewarded with my first big bloom on a plant I bought with no sign of flowering: a deep orange-colored flower on the Maltese Cross I planted (above).

The other plants in that bed are doing fine, growing slowly but surely.

At the end there (above), you can see the cilantro and parsley are holding their own. I think they're not liking the hot days we've had intermittently, but I spread the bed with a bit of compost and manure and cocoa bean mulch after taking these photos, so I hope that will help all the plants along.

In the front of that bed, the phlox and zinnia seeds I planted seem to slowly be peeking out:

Also pretty happy is the hydrangea plant, and beside it, the butterfly bush, below:

The purslane bed on the right is doing splendidly:

The one on the left (below) is still growing up from tiny little plants.

In that same bed, the mint is much happier:

Behind them, the eggplants are growing slowly. I saw a little purple bloom on one of them, but sadly I knocked it off after I took the photo while I was watering.

The tomatoes seem to be growing slowly. I hope the compost/manure mix and mulch will help them a lot too.

The herbs generally seem pretty happy.

The only one that really doesn't look too happy is the lemon verbena, there between the basil plants and the variegated sage above. I'm not sure what is going wrong there.

The pineapple sage and horehound above seem to be growing steadily, and the chocolate mint is thriving.

My fight with the "lawn demons" continues, though. Since they weedwhacked the best bed of mint I had, below, I surrounded that one too with a ring of rocks (below). I would have done before, but they got to me before I had a chance to, while I was in Ann Arbor at the end of the long power outage. I'm mad, but I know that the mint will come back, probably even hardier than before.


I'm taking similar precautions along the border, where I've also planted mint. Now I'm experimenting with other kinds of materials, including tree branches and broken pottery, since I'm not sure I have quite enough stones to cover every boundary clearly.

Despite their best efforts, the mint still is growing nicely there, and I don't think it will be long before I really do have a nice (edible) border covering that ugly PVC.

That other variety of mint is also thriving in the little bed at the front of the walkway:


The walkway is also improving in appearance as the purslane and that other succulent fill in a bit. Some are still pretty small, but I expect that they'll grow in time. Their older siblings are already looking nice and bushy.


And despite my having thinned it considerably, the purslane is still growing in in patches of grass where the sod is thin.

In the garden plot, I know I have some more work I ought to be doing. Things are dry, and I know they want more organic material to thrive. It's hard, though, because the mosquitoes have been so thick over there, and every time I start working the soil, they're on top of me and I have a couple dozen new bites almost immediately. The peas, especially, have been suffering.


Still, there's been some growth. The okra plants below are shooting up.

And the vines of the squash and melon plants are moving along.

The melon plants have begun to flower.

The beans are growing (below), though I think a rabbit or other critter may have gotten to one of them.

After taking the photos, I did a ton more work, adding compost/manure almost everywhere, working it into the soil where I could, and adding topsoil in some places too, and cocoa bean mulch in some. I also did a BUNCH more planting, including Oriental poppy, larkspur, sunflower, more zinnia, marigold, black-eyed Susan, purple cornflower, snapdragon, lettuce, spinach, carrot, radish, zucchini, redbud, strawberry, sweetpeas, and mixed wildflowers.

I'll update ASAP to show how things are getting along.

Wow, this narrated tour of the human heart as seen in a CT scan is pretty amazing. (Just click on the video on the left of the article.)

Considering birthday activities. The 30-mile 'fun ride' component of One Helluva Ride? The Michigan ElvisFest? Maybe a bike tour of Detroit (if their scheduling cooperates)? A nature hike at the Washtenaw County Farm Park? Something else? Of course there's also the variety of free fun things Ann Arbor businesses offer for birthday celebrations.

Dancer in the Dark

Oh, the summer storms. There are some oak trees that have been ripped right out of the ground in some spots around the area. My power was still out when I went home yesterday, so we emptied my fridge of any perishables, did a little tidying, and collected some things so I could spend a few days away from home. Oh, bother.

Many local folks don't seem to know that you can look at a frequently updated map of the Detroit Edison power company service area that gives information about the extent of the power outages in your particular zip code. It doesn't give address by address information, although you can check the status of a previously reported power problem through their "Storm Center" on their website. But the map does at least give you some information, about whether there is an outage problem or not. They update it every half hour.

What I really wanted to do (since I can't book the next flight to Cali to be with my family) was hide out at home, clean my house, work in my garden, do a little swimming, and work on my archaeology paper. But we're going to hit some barbecues this afternoon, to celebrate our status as, in the words of the wonderful Miki, "the greatest democracy in the world." Luckily my friends have a sense of irony; drinking the afternoon away at a "4th of July Proud To Be An American Imperialist BBQ and Slip and Slide Party" sounds like something I can handle, I guess.

Well, Umlud and I are off for a bike ride around A2.