Twitter is, as many have said before me, absolutely amazing. Yes, it allowed Iranians to tell their stories, yes celebrities and pundits have the same 120 characters as @guy2skreww (Whitman would love Twitter in the same way he loved grass). Twitter is most likely the future.
But my favorite part? I love how Twitter allows me to tailor my world. Today I searched for NYRB. I came up with two sets of tweets-- those who are raving about that thoughtful piece on online journalism (or the Chabon article-- what up, behind on your reading!) and those who are reacting to some sort of sporting event (soccer? minor league baseball? I have no idea.). I was able to follow the people who interested me, and now I have two choices. Either I can follow the "public timeline", with its abbreviations and low-riding pants and Miller Lites, or I can switch to "my view". Knopf publishing, NPR, that girl who works at Conde Nast traveler... my timeline wears trousers, is concerned with spelling, and has a polite regard for large domestic beers.
It's like my first iPod, which allowed me to go to large, noisy public places but still feel safe and cradled by the familiar; with my earbuds in, I didn't care what was going on around me. Now Twitter lets me handpick the residents of my Twitter City. Oh how I love turning the egalitarian into the elitist!
July 29, 2009
October 22, 2008
Soul Comfort
I hadn't even started my coffee when I was hit in the face. My borgle and I were sitting on the couch. I was trying to wake up. He was passing gas. I turned on the computer to check the headlines and WAM! There, at the top of the Opinion page of the New York Times online edition, was the byline of a girl I went to college with. Another 26 year-old with the same useless degree from the same obscure college... except she has pieces in the Times and I have a flatulent dog. Hours later, my bitterness has only grown.
I have accepted some of the successes of my former peers. My college roommates are all married with children. I have accepted the fact that Sophie, a girl from high school with perfect skin and a Pen Faulkner-awarded father is a Yale alum and in grad school at the University of Chicago. I have accepted that the girl who bullied me from kindergarten to eighth grade is now making a name for herself in the science world (in animal husbandry, but STILL). Or that other girl from high school, with the career in publishing who married into Old Money. These are all things that I wish had happened to me, but none of them were actual aspirations.
But the Times. The Freakin' New York Times. Since I was in middle school, and starting to learn what was what in the world, I wanted to be a reporter for the Times. As I got older, I lowered the bar: first to being a copy editor, then to a fact-checker. Now I would be happy if I could just get the damn thing delivered to my house every morning.
Her piece, I have to say, is thoughtful and appropriately sad. She's writing about the ludicrous state of education for poor children and how she's trying to fight the crushing wave of parental laxity, administrative confusion, and all of the other thousands of factors that are ruining the furture for so many students. I can see her there, standing in the middle of her classroom, overwhelmed and exhausted. She's trying to climb a mountain of pebbles, or heard cats as my former colleague would say.
I remember this desperate feeling. I felt it when I was teaching in Baltimore. I feel for this former classmate and the soul-numbing struggle she is facing, but most of all, I felt jealous. Of her success and her impact on the world. And, you know, of the whole piece-of-writing-in-the-Times thing. I know that this makes me a self-absorbed, terrible person, but there you are.
After work, I picked up the stinky dog from Doggie Day Care, then came home to a cold house. Since I felt sorry for myself and was slated to spend the whole evening alone (meeting cancelled, the mans with a government customer to please), I needed comfort food. And the quintessential comfort food is, of course, polenta. But not the cheesy kind. I didn't want savory. I needed sweet.
40 minutes later, after eating a big bowl of this and watching my dog roll in a pile of leaves in the yard, I am feeling much better about myself.
Sweet-n-Creamy Polenta
adapted from A Year in the Vegetarian Kitchen, by Jack Bishop
4 c water
1 c coarse ground corn meal
salt
1 1/2 c frozen corn kernels
2 tbsp butter
1/4 c sugar
In a medium sauce pan, bring the water to a boil. Add the salt, then reduce heat to low. Slowly pour in the cornmeal, stirring with a whisk as you pour. Stir for about a minute total, add the corn, then cover with a tight-fitting lid. Let cook for 30-45 minutes stirring when you think about it. Finished polenta is thick like porridge. Stir in the butter and the the sugar. Dump into a big bowl and enjoy.
I have accepted some of the successes of my former peers. My college roommates are all married with children. I have accepted the fact that Sophie, a girl from high school with perfect skin and a Pen Faulkner-awarded father is a Yale alum and in grad school at the University of Chicago. I have accepted that the girl who bullied me from kindergarten to eighth grade is now making a name for herself in the science world (in animal husbandry, but STILL). Or that other girl from high school, with the career in publishing who married into Old Money. These are all things that I wish had happened to me, but none of them were actual aspirations.
But the Times. The Freakin' New York Times. Since I was in middle school, and starting to learn what was what in the world, I wanted to be a reporter for the Times. As I got older, I lowered the bar: first to being a copy editor, then to a fact-checker. Now I would be happy if I could just get the damn thing delivered to my house every morning.
Her piece, I have to say, is thoughtful and appropriately sad. She's writing about the ludicrous state of education for poor children and how she's trying to fight the crushing wave of parental laxity, administrative confusion, and all of the other thousands of factors that are ruining the furture for so many students. I can see her there, standing in the middle of her classroom, overwhelmed and exhausted. She's trying to climb a mountain of pebbles, or heard cats as my former colleague would say.
I remember this desperate feeling. I felt it when I was teaching in Baltimore. I feel for this former classmate and the soul-numbing struggle she is facing, but most of all, I felt jealous. Of her success and her impact on the world. And, you know, of the whole piece-of-writing-in-the-Times thing. I know that this makes me a self-absorbed, terrible person, but there you are.
After work, I picked up the stinky dog from Doggie Day Care, then came home to a cold house. Since I felt sorry for myself and was slated to spend the whole evening alone (meeting cancelled, the mans with a government customer to please), I needed comfort food. And the quintessential comfort food is, of course, polenta. But not the cheesy kind. I didn't want savory. I needed sweet.
40 minutes later, after eating a big bowl of this and watching my dog roll in a pile of leaves in the yard, I am feeling much better about myself.
Sweet-n-Creamy Polenta
adapted from A Year in the Vegetarian Kitchen, by Jack Bishop
4 c water
1 c coarse ground corn meal
salt
1 1/2 c frozen corn kernels
2 tbsp butter
1/4 c sugar
In a medium sauce pan, bring the water to a boil. Add the salt, then reduce heat to low. Slowly pour in the cornmeal, stirring with a whisk as you pour. Stir for about a minute total, add the corn, then cover with a tight-fitting lid. Let cook for 30-45 minutes stirring when you think about it. Finished polenta is thick like porridge. Stir in the butter and the the sugar. Dump into a big bowl and enjoy.
October 20, 2008
I.
I remember the day that I realized I wasn't very good at anything tangible. I was in 11th grade, at a high school that modeled itself after the school in "Fame". Except we weren't in New York, or Los Angeles, or any place where people with talent lived for very long and certainly not where anyone was discovered.
I was in the Literary program, and spent much of my time writing poems inspired by ee cumings, convinced that I could do more with punctuation than he had. Actually, I spent some of my time on that. The rest of my time was spent drinking coffee, searching for fingerless gloves to wear while I wrote poems outside in the winter, and trying to get my pen to leave an ink stain on my finger like I imagined happened to George Eliot. I was very interested in what it meant to live the writer's life. I poured over photos of Updike's three desks, trying to arrange mine in the same way. I was always on the lookout for the perfect journal, one large enough to be comfortable, yet still able to fit into my canvas bag. I loved being a Writer.
Writing, though, was difficult. I was great with setting, with creating detailed characters, nuancing their language so you knew who was talking without having to backtrack. And that was where it ended. My characters, so round and fleshy, just stood (or sat) around richly textured places and talked. They never went anywhere or did anything. Nothing ever happened. Poems were much the same: six or seven lines, spaced beautifully, punctuated to the nines... and boring.
Jacob and I met at a poetry reading. We'd been dating for a few months when I came across his poetry folder. As I read through them, I started crying. Yes, they were very sweet --some even beautiful-- but I cried because he was better than me, and since I knew it absolutely now, I couldn't write any more.
Flashing forward ten years, I am now sitting in Pittsburgh, hours away from my home and friends. I have a miserable, tedious, thankless job. I have an English degree, which is a most useless $120,000 piece of paper. I have two cats with eating disorders and a dog with seperation anxiety issues. I do have a lovely man. I will never grow tired of praising his sweet, darkly hilarious self. However, he's a rocket scientist who plays music, fixes things, and beats me at Jeopardy. He is also unerringly nice and supportive. I hope you know how irritating all of that can be.
We just bought a house. It's a decent size, and sits on a nice piece of land, but it was neglected by the previous owners. It was also built in the early 90's, making it too new or too old, depending. I'll just call it dated.
Two days ago, I realized that I needed to have a goal. Goals work for me, but since I have a man and a house, and have already dropped out of graduate school, I have been aimless for quite some time. And if you've ever been a childless 20-something in a dead-end, soul-numbing job, you know how appealing it would be to have a little direction. So in an effort to please the mans, I was organizing my issues of Gourmet when it came to me.
I want people to WANT to come to my house for dinner.
And it all came flooding in: my love of ambiance, accessories, conversation, presentation. What is more about those things than a dinner party? I also love to read, and Julia Child promised that "if you can read, you can cook." Goodness knows I buy cookbooks at almost the same pace as I buy cigarettes, so there will always be something from which to pull.
I recognize that I can't really cook. And maybe I'm not so good at follow-through. But how hard can it be to achieve such a simple goal, right?
Alright then.
Patsa for When It's October and You Need Time to Think
(from a memory inspired by Gourmet, a fall 2007 issue)
1 1/2 lbs. brussel sprouts
1/3 c. pine nuts
grape seed oil
linguine
1/3 c. heavy cream
salt
pepper
Parmesean
-Prepare the brussel sprouts by chopping off their nubs and pulling off the thick outer leaves. Wash thoroughly. Slice them into halves if they're tiny, quarters if they're golf ball-sized.
-Make your linguine, drain, and return to the pot.
-In a large saute pan, write your first initial in grapeseed oil, then heat over medium heat.
-Add pine nuts and stir them very quickly so they turn golden brown and not black.
-Add brussel sprouts and keep stirring.
-When the brussel sprouts start turning brown on the tender side, add the cream.
-Stir again, then allow to simmer for a few minutes.
-Dump the mixture over the linguine and toss well. Season with salt and pepper then top with grated parmesean.
*I prepared this while drinking Beaujolis and listening to Lucinda Williams's "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road".
I was in the Literary program, and spent much of my time writing poems inspired by ee cumings, convinced that I could do more with punctuation than he had. Actually, I spent some of my time on that. The rest of my time was spent drinking coffee, searching for fingerless gloves to wear while I wrote poems outside in the winter, and trying to get my pen to leave an ink stain on my finger like I imagined happened to George Eliot. I was very interested in what it meant to live the writer's life. I poured over photos of Updike's three desks, trying to arrange mine in the same way. I was always on the lookout for the perfect journal, one large enough to be comfortable, yet still able to fit into my canvas bag. I loved being a Writer.
Writing, though, was difficult. I was great with setting, with creating detailed characters, nuancing their language so you knew who was talking without having to backtrack. And that was where it ended. My characters, so round and fleshy, just stood (or sat) around richly textured places and talked. They never went anywhere or did anything. Nothing ever happened. Poems were much the same: six or seven lines, spaced beautifully, punctuated to the nines... and boring.
Jacob and I met at a poetry reading. We'd been dating for a few months when I came across his poetry folder. As I read through them, I started crying. Yes, they were very sweet --some even beautiful-- but I cried because he was better than me, and since I knew it absolutely now, I couldn't write any more.
Flashing forward ten years, I am now sitting in Pittsburgh, hours away from my home and friends. I have a miserable, tedious, thankless job. I have an English degree, which is a most useless $120,000 piece of paper. I have two cats with eating disorders and a dog with seperation anxiety issues. I do have a lovely man. I will never grow tired of praising his sweet, darkly hilarious self. However, he's a rocket scientist who plays music, fixes things, and beats me at Jeopardy. He is also unerringly nice and supportive. I hope you know how irritating all of that can be.
We just bought a house. It's a decent size, and sits on a nice piece of land, but it was neglected by the previous owners. It was also built in the early 90's, making it too new or too old, depending. I'll just call it dated.
Two days ago, I realized that I needed to have a goal. Goals work for me, but since I have a man and a house, and have already dropped out of graduate school, I have been aimless for quite some time. And if you've ever been a childless 20-something in a dead-end, soul-numbing job, you know how appealing it would be to have a little direction. So in an effort to please the mans, I was organizing my issues of Gourmet when it came to me.
I want people to WANT to come to my house for dinner.
And it all came flooding in: my love of ambiance, accessories, conversation, presentation. What is more about those things than a dinner party? I also love to read, and Julia Child promised that "if you can read, you can cook." Goodness knows I buy cookbooks at almost the same pace as I buy cigarettes, so there will always be something from which to pull.
I recognize that I can't really cook. And maybe I'm not so good at follow-through. But how hard can it be to achieve such a simple goal, right?
Alright then.
Patsa for When It's October and You Need Time to Think
(from a memory inspired by Gourmet, a fall 2007 issue)
1 1/2 lbs. brussel sprouts
1/3 c. pine nuts
grape seed oil
linguine
1/3 c. heavy cream
salt
pepper
Parmesean
-Prepare the brussel sprouts by chopping off their nubs and pulling off the thick outer leaves. Wash thoroughly. Slice them into halves if they're tiny, quarters if they're golf ball-sized.
-Make your linguine, drain, and return to the pot.
-In a large saute pan, write your first initial in grapeseed oil, then heat over medium heat.
-Add pine nuts and stir them very quickly so they turn golden brown and not black.
-Add brussel sprouts and keep stirring.
-When the brussel sprouts start turning brown on the tender side, add the cream.
-Stir again, then allow to simmer for a few minutes.
-Dump the mixture over the linguine and toss well. Season with salt and pepper then top with grated parmesean.
*I prepared this while drinking Beaujolis and listening to Lucinda Williams's "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road".
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