split time

Christine reminded me that I haven't been posting here at all. That is due to dissertationing and general not-with-it-ness, but really it's because I've been posting a lot on my history blog, even writing about food over there! So if you want to keep up with me, you should drop by. I'll have doughnuts ready.

Collapse

Tonight a bridge collapsed on 35w over the Mississippi, a bridge I drive on often, bike under even more often, a bridge connecting downtown and the U and Northeast Mpls. I first heard when Katherine called me to see if I was alive, and then I listened to the radio till I went to the bar to watch the telly, to hear the mayor and the governor and our senators etc make pronoucements. Cari was set to drive up to Roseville right at that time, and luckily she had to work late. Luckily all of my friends seem to be okay.

What a fucking catastrophe. What can I do as a historian? I wish I were an EMT. I wish I could be helpful http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifin some way. I work at the museum at HCMC, the hospital where they're bringing survivors. I'll try to get some oral histories tomorrow. I can't see what else I can do.

Here are some photos from flickr and the breaking news on wikipedia.

More fermenting

I now have a million projects fermenting merrily in my kitchen:

a sourdough starter
kombucha
mixed veg dill crock
dill pickles (I'm brining them and will process them in vinegar for the fair)
Indian-style lemon pickle (from Indian Food Rocks)

Projects on the horizon:

This week at the market I bought 8 quarts of strawberries, so jam is coming soon.

I put in a big order to gem cultures, so there will soon be miso!

I ordered a cheesemaking book, so there will soon be cheese!

Other non-dissertation activities:
Went to the Walker with C. on Saturday to see the Picasso and American Art exhibit, which was actually pretty boring, lots of slavish imitations of early Picasso, and only one woman artist in the whole show (Louise Bourgeois). I did like the room of Jasper Johns at the end. But they have a fab show up of works on paper from their permanent collection, including some of my favorites: Amy Cutler, Julie Mehretu, that piece with the paper eaten by snails, this amazing book with a laser-cut house in it, the piece with postcard-sized comix images of what happens on every page of Gravity's Rainbow. Hurrah!

Also, I joined a choir. We're singing Fauré's Requiem. July 28, 7 pm, Ted Mann. Be there.

Poetry Friday: the aleatoric sestina

Me and my friend R. finally got around to choosing words for our aleatoric sestinas. Rules: 5 random words from the dictionary, 1 from a globe. I don't have a globe so we used an atlas. Order of words used in the poems is up-for-grabs, can be chosen with dice or willy-nilly (and is yet to be determined).

My words are:
impatient
poppy
yellow
offense
futile
sea

Sounds like my usual post-colonial setting, but we'll see what happens.

Rachel's words are:
pester
fever
forefathers
menagerie
porter
ocean

She has some very particular words that you might not expect to see six times in a poem. I see in her words an 18th C epidemic, like Fever 1793.

Stay tuned for the resulting sestina!

Fireworks, fermentation, fluffy books

Since I'm taking July off from dissertating, I've been able to do things I enjoy. Yesterday, for instance, I started up a brine crock with some cucumbers and kohlrabi and dill, started a sourdough starter, and made some kombucha from the mother R brought me (all the way from Grand Marais!). I went to a potluck at M's house and saw some nice fireworks. I talked doughnuts with G, A, and A. How many groups of hip young people want to start doughnut shops? Many, it seems. I read Millicent Min, Girl Genius. I joined a summer choir that starts next week. I get to play with computers at my summer job. I have a date next week. Lots of things are going right.

Found quote: "Milk is a more accursed drink than water." Lord Dunsany, Tales of Wonder, which I'm reading before I go to bed. His stories are all enormously frustrating, because they're about other stories that are too dangerous and terrible to actually tell us, or the characters die before they can tell the stories.

My other summer reading has been the novels of Georgette Heyer, who wrote Regency romances. Usually, anything labelled 'romance' would never get past my heteronormativity shit detector, but recently lots of YA writers/bloggers have been talking about how much they love her, and I ventured up to the Dewey section of the U library and, well, I love these novels, with their plucky, unconventional heroines, and their grumpy gentleman and all their witty repartee. I have read about six so far, Lady of Quality, Devil's Cub, Arabella, Frederica, and--oh, dear, I can't even remember the others, they do blend toghether. But I recommend them as fab beachy novels.

Good words

“The unfinished dissertation is more than a draft of a very long document; it’s an intermediate state of consciousness between your student past and the longed-for uncertainty of your professional life.” William Germano, From Dissertation to Book.


Graffiti seen today on my ride into work:

"Forgive yourself."


Last year's favorite graffiti, on the same trail:

"Freedom means never being in a hurry."

Daffodil

I took the what flower are you quiz (via fuse), and I'm my favorite flower!

I am a Daffodil What Flower Are You?