Cornucopia

Posted on November 22, 2010 by Hannah

Is there anything more perfect than fall? I always feel a little sad as Thanksgiving draws close because it means that fall is surrendering to winter.  Christmas softens the blow, but I still mourn the passing of October and November. October is especially glorious, and if I wasn’t so busy/ lazy, I would have written about this in October instead of now in November. I like the crispness of October days, the respite from Summer and the way you get to bundle into scarves and coats that you don’t really need but are just fun to wear.  I like crunchy leaves and grey windy days, salted caramel hot chocolate at Starbucks and the compulsive need everyone feels to make chile.  October is never long enough.

I propose exchanging March for a second October. I’m not exactly sure how this works, because I don’t really want to prolong the wait towards Christmas, nor do I think October weather is possible without the transforming trees that come only in autumn.  I just think that March is a cruel, long, cold month that promises spring only to have reoccurring cold dreary days.

But enough of that. I still have 9 days left in November.  I love living in Kentucky again, near my family, and all the gorgeous fall offerings of the bluegrass.  Here are some favorites: apple picking, pumpkin picking, pumpkin carving, ok anything to do with pumpkins, Boyd’s Orchard apple donuts, crunchy leaves, colorful streets, crackling fires, and gourds from the farmer’s market, just to name a few.  Basically, fall makes me think of a cornucopia. I really love cornucopias, even though it took me three tries to spell that word right.  I remember learning about them in elementary school when we did plays about pilgrims. They seem to be the embodiment of bounty, the incarnation of fall overflowing with plenty. They are the symbol of harvest, running over with beets, gourds, turnips, and all sorts of other vegetables that I like more in theory than in reality. Going to the farmer’s market in October or November is like living in a cornucopia, as every stall is bursting with color.  I was so overjoyed with harvest joy that I bought three giant butternut squashes, only to make the most disgusting squash soup ever consumed. (Side note: If anyone has a good squash soup recipe, do share!)  And so I leave with a cornucopia of images from my autumn, and may we all pray for a magical exchange to have  another one come March.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment

More Ballerinas

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Hannah

After posting today’s post, a friend directed me to this website, which made me jump up and down with joy.

Could life get any better than this?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Ballerina

Posted on November 13, 2010 by Hannah

My name is Hannah and I wish I was a ballerina. This phrase is very intentionally in the present tense because my ballerina dreams did not die when I stopped taking ballet about 9 years ago. I am an unabashed ballet junkie who likes to sit as close to the stage as possible and stare at the perfect sea of iridescent pink shoes and silken ribbons. Wearing a tutu to work is more of an obsession than a mere desire. While I lived in Paris I sought tickets to every ballet imaginable, and would periodically stand in front of the dance shoe store to pine over pointe shoes.  My friend Ana- Joel actually bought some of those enchanted shoes one day, which led to this joyous photo in a park.  Who could resist becoming a ballerina in the parks of Paris?

But few become ballerinas. The rest of us spend our existence in a dull life void of sequins and glitter, twirls and leaps, ruffles and floating gauze. Thus, when one of the teachers that I work with suggested signing up for adult ballet classes at a local professional dance studio, I needed no persuasion. In my mind, it would be an hour and a half a week where I twirled around in my pink skirt to some pretty music.

This vision dissipated with the first lesson. Adam—our petit slave driver of an instructor who looks more graceful in tennis shoes and basketball shorts than I ever will in my pink skirt—doesn’t care that this class is just for fun. He expects, no demands, perfection, barking out commands until we literally drip sweat. Where are my sequins and effortless floating? Gone.  I don’t remember ballet being this hard. Am I getting old? Is it sad that I actually wobble in to school sore the day after class where I feebly demonstrate to my students what I learned the night before? Last night I did have one leaping success, and an attempt to perform this to my audience of students today almost resulted in me flashing the entire senior class.  Half the time I can’t keep up with combinations and often I trade looks with the other two teachers that can be loosely translated as “Adam-you-have-got-to-be-kidding-there-is-no-way-my-leg-can-go-that-high-up-for-that-long-of-a-OOOOWWWWWW-ok,-I-guess-when-you-yank-it-like-that-maybe-it’s-possible.”

For an orchestra, we have Adam’s ipod.  For a gleaming studio we have the gloomy room just close enough to the “real” ballet classes that we can always know what we fall short off.  In place of tutus, I am pretty sure I saw 80’s solar pants on one of the other ladies.  But it is still ballet and in every class there is at least one moment where it is still magical. And for that one moment, I am a ballerina.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Primary Colors and Prime Ministers

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Hannah

“I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.” – Winston Churchill

I don’t actually remember learning the color wheel. I am sure that at some point in my elementary years Miss Wetlaufer (a fantastic name for an art teacher) explained the color wheel, but I don’t remember when. The primary triad, secondary triad, tertiary colors, and all those perfect complimentary duos have been ingrained in me as long as I can remember.  Where does the color wheel even come from?  It is something in which I trust, in which I believe, and so in my heart I really feel that it wasn’t so much invented as discovered, emerging from the nature’s palette. And it works, this color wheel.  We are instinctively drawn to the combinations it dictates. Red and green go together not just because of Christmas, but because they spend eternity pining for each other across the color wheel.

And no colors harmonize like the primary colors, those parents of all color.  I know that they conjure images of juvenile building blocks and Mondrian paintings, but to me they are that bold trio that cannot be ignored.  I notice them everywhere and never cease to delight when I find them.Winston Churchill, other than being an important statesman, was an artist. Maybe at the end of the day he needed to shed the world’s troubles and exchange it for the artist’s happily assumed burden, that of working with colors that are “lovely to look at and delicious to squeeze out.”  In his writings on painting, he repeatedly comes back to the fun of it all, the joy of color, and the comfort of being rendered speechless by a world that is too beautiful to be captured. How could a man who had seen so much of humanity’s ugliness still feel that way?

“The painter wanders and loiters contentedly from place to place, always on the lookout for some brilliant butterfly of a picture which can be caught and carried safely home,” Churchill wrote.  Maybe art doesn’t always have to be a result of training. Maybe sometimes it is about opening our eyes as we wander around. At one end of the spectrum exists white, at the other, black. But in between, all is color.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Paris, tu me manques

Posted on October 24, 2010 by Hannah
I don’t know if you have been following what is happening in Paris right now (and France as a whole), but my students and I have been reading articles and talking about it all week.   You can see some amazing pictures by going here. Basically, the French government is changing retirement age and plans and so the revolution thirsty people have once again sent out the cry “Aux barricades!” to let the government know that no reform comes with a strike.  It’s funny because I know that the people have already had strikes over this same issue before.  My sweet American students were utterly baffled at the strikes.  I tried to explain that sometimes a government tries to do something that is good for everyone in the long run, but it may individually inconvenience people.  Thus, my students decided the French were selfish.  No, I explained, the right to strike – the duty to strike almost – is something makes the French, French.  The ability and desire to be involved in policy making by passionately parading through the streets and missing work is integral to who they are.  Thus, my students decided the French were heroes. 

As I read articles about gas shortages, and hear stories of long treks to work and missed activities, I miss it.  I miss being a city that pulsated with life and history, that ebbed and flowed with the whims of a fickle and passionate people.  I miss the art and history, the beauty and culture, la vie parisienne.  I miss my beloved Parisian friends, my precious church, and my tiny chambre de bonne at the top of 8 flights of stairs.

Fall has come to Kentucky, and it is beautiful.  Last week I took a long crunchy leaf walk, and I couldn’t stop thinking about 2 other beautiful falls that I spent in Paris. So here is a fall picture, one from which I am now very far, but to which I will forever feel exceedingly close.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Hello there Indulgence

Posted on October 17, 2010 by Hannah

Chocolate. Can there ever be too many ways to eat chocolate? No.  At the school where I teach there is a chocolate box in the front office, dutifully stocked by the school secretary who knows what people need to continue functioning. Dessert for me means chocolate.  Occasionally I come across a dessert that wows me without being stuffed with chocolaty goodness, but this is not the norm.

For people who really love chocolate, flourless chocolate cake recipes are an endless temptation.  I discovered this recipe while I was living in France, and made it multiple times.  The finished cake took up almost an entire shelf of my tiny apartment fridge, but it meant that I could come home from work and eat forkfuls of paradise . . . or start the day off with a chocolate rush. Two of my friends visited me in France and I welcomed them with this cake, which we munched on the remainder of their visit. One of them has since been diagnosed with a gluten allergy that seriously restricts her dessert consumptions. Luckily, this chocolate cake is already gluten free. When you have that much butter, sugar, heavy cream, and dark chocolate, who needs flour?

Very Rich Flourless Chocolate Cake

Taken from some French cookbook in the house where I nannied, and converted out of metric using the website here.

30 TBS Butter (this is about 3.8 sticks. Don’t flinch, just do it. Remember there’s no flour!)

15 oz (430 grams) dark chocolate

8 eggs

¾ cup sugar

1 ¼ cups heavy cream

Cream and strawberries for serving

Preheat the oven to 350. Grease 10 in round baking dish. Sometimes I cheat and do two smaller ones.

Melt butter, chocolate, and cream in the microwave or a double boiler.  If using the microwave, be sure to stir the mixture every 90 seconds or you will scorch the cream and chocolate and have no wonderful chocolate cake.

Gradually add the sugar, stirring till it dissolves.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs lightly before slowly adding them to the chocolate mixture.

Pour into the prepared pan(s) and cook 40 minutes. The cake will crack slightly on top and puff up. Leave the cake to cool for at least several hours, than preferably overnight in the fridge. It will quickly collapse as it cools, providing a wonderful dense cake. Serve with strawberries and unsweetened whip cream.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

What is art?

Posted on October 14, 2010 by Hannah

I am currently reading one of the best books I have ever read. I guess I should offer the disclaimer that I declare this about most books I am reading, as I am given to profuse and extreme expressions of preference.  But this time, I am really serious. It is a nonfiction book, and for an unabashed lover of stories, this is a big step.

My freshmen year of college, our college president asked me what art was.  I was an art major, and so in theory I should have been prepared for this question. You need to realize that the president of my college was known for planting himself at cafeteria tables and not leaving before he had simultaneously inspired and insulted everyone at the table.  The ability to do both is perhaps why he thrives as a collegiate administrator.  As an all-knowing freshman (which of course, means ALL freshmen) I had a quick answer from an essay by my beloved John Ruskin: “Art is the greatest expression of the greatest ideas.”  He quickly proceeded to tear my response to pieces, which is the job of all good professors when faced with idealistic and quick-tongued students.

But he left me thinking about I question which I will forever more consider. What is art, or more specifically, what standards can be called upon in defining what makes good art, true art?  About once a month, I take stock of my thoughts and attempt to articulate what my answer. I am fascinated with reading the writings of various artists, critics, and historians, who all seek to establish some clear answer to a nebulous question.  How do you explain something that by definition transcends words or concrete ideas?

I have my own theories on what art is, but I will save those for another day when I don’t have a pile of French III retakes to grade. (Hi there, I’m the pushover softy new teacher who can’t bear to see your precious faces crumble at your failing grades so I give retakes.) But for now I leave you with a quote from an expert.  I fell in love with author John Gardner my senior year of high school, and my insanely smart big brother recently loaned me his book On Moral Fiction.  In this book, Gardner argues for standards in art, and critics that call art to task and demand more of it than what it is giving.

The traditional view is that true art is moral: it seeks to improve life, not debase it. It seeks to hold off, at least for a while, the twilight of the gods and us. I do not deny that art, like criticism, may legitimately celebrate the trifling. . . . But trivial art has no meaning or value except in the shadow of more serious art, the kind of art that beats back the monsters and, if you will, makes the world safe for triviality. The art which tends towards destruction, the art of nihilists, cynics, and merdistes is not properly art at all. Art is essentially serious and beneficial, a game played against chaos and death, against entropy. . . . [this] is what true art is all about – preservation of the world of gods and men.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Almost Famous

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Hannah

I love my job. Part of this love is birthed from sheer gratefulness, as jobs are few and far between these days.  But often even those who are thankful to have jobs dread going to them. Not so with Mademoiselle Stone.  I teach high school French, and basically when you are a high school teacher, you are a celebrity. True, you don’t get paid as much. Recently a college representative came to our school and gave the students information about why they should go to college.  There was a pay scale graph in the pamphlet, showing the relationship between educational degrees and salary.  According to said graph, I make more than someone who hasn’t finished high school, but still fall short of the person who has obtained their high school diploma. Oh the joys of teaching in private school.  Still, as a young person living in central KY, it is enough to live on, so even that doesn’t deter me from my love of my job.  Like celebrities, teachers spend all day being watched by the fickle masses who love you one minute before hating you the next.  Like with celebrities these judgmental masses comment om every fashion choice and hair decision I. However unlike celebrities, I have to form these fashion decisions around a dress code that I am constantly on the verge of breaking.  My “Teaching in France” wardrobe doesn’t quite cut it in Kentucky Christian Classical education.  Quite frequently I come to school with a marker line across my legs at the 3 inches above the knee mark because I just can’t eyeball it.

Stardom does sometimes mean gifts, like these beautiful rolls of goat cheese. One of my students comes from a family who raises goats and makes homemade goat cheese. I am considering ways that I can earn more of said cheese because it is delicious.   Sometimes I get cookies, and on my birthday I received a bar of dark chocolate, cards, a ziplock bag on animal crackers and a piece of beef jerky. Oh the spoils of fame.

But mostly I love my job because I get to spend all day having fun in French with amazing students.  One minute I am singing songs about school supplies and the next I am running around the classroom like a dinosaur (ok, so I guess that didn’t really have much to do with French . . .).  I get so excited about grammar that I can barely handle it, and when I read the seniors their first quarter memory poem, I cried. They of course, did not because of a lack of vocabulary, but tears will come with learning!  I have always heard that saying that those who can’t do, teach.  Though it is true that many liberal arts college graduates feel fit for nothing other than the classroom, it isn’t quite the truth. Those who teach, those who should teach, do so because they love a subject so much that they can’t bear to dilute it by applying it in some “practical” way.  They just want to spend their lives plumbing the depths of something they love, imparting it to others and learning it afresh each day. These are the teachers.

Now back to grading papers. This would seem a boring task, but I encourage my students to draw pictures on the back of their quizzes. I have thus far uncovered a baby in a diaper jumping on trampoline screaming about its love for French, several monsters, one declaration of love for French in Spanish, and an Oktobere Fest collage.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 4 Comments

A Last Look Back at Summer

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Hannah

Today was the first truly fall day, the first day where I have stayed bundled in wool socks and a sweatshirt since coming home from church, the first day where I started pining for Christmas movies, and the first day where I bought a new stash of tea.  Fall is here in all of her heavy grey sky, misty rain coziness.  And I am ready for it, really I am. I am ready for thick tights and boots, and mugs of cocoa.  But not without one last gaze back at summer tomatoes and berries, long days and crickets.

When we were little we used to spend our summers eating mulberries. Mulberries, for those of you who didn’t instinctively eat all the local flora and fauna, are the ugly cousins of blackberries. Now, I recognize this. But as a kid, I could care less. They were there and I could eat them until my fingers were totally purple. We put them in muffins, and I think once I even tried making jam without success.  Nothing equals summer like berry stained faces.  For the three perfect summers during college where I worked at summer camp, I counted the days till the blackberry bushes bent under the weight of ripened fruit. Then I trudged through thorns with my campers to pick fistfuls of berries.  We ate most of them, but the few that made it back were added to canned berries and cooked into blackberry cobbler from the Betty Crocker 1954 cookbook. I challenge you to find any recipe for blackberry cobbler that can top Betty’s.

If you haven’t read the children’s book The Relatives Came, by Cynthia Rylant, you should. My grandmother keeps a copy and used to read it whenever we all got together. I think someone wrote it after watching a Stone/ Coleman gathering. We eat lots, talk loudly, charge around making messes, and feel delightfully happy all the while. This past summer, my Georgia cousins came.  I had been running on some public lands nearby and discovered fields of wild blackberry bushes that had yet to be picked. 8 cousins and two hours later we had picked pounds of blackberries, filled our pockets with flowers, drawn designs on our arms with juice, and pitted beetles against wasps in some of the berry jars. That night there was blackberry lime cake (thank you Smitten Kitchen!) and the following morning there were blackberry pancakes. Thus goes summer.

But now back to fall. I guess the beautiful thing about seasonal joys is that you get to live in eternal expectation of them coming again. Summer always returns. And with her come long days full of berry stained hands and nights spent with cousins on the front porch, listening to the gentle symphony of crickets.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment