KVARESTO8
Walking Projects
Fairfax Cross County Trail, 41 miles: completed 2 July 2010.
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Monthly Archives: December 2009
Some lists: 6
Nearby cities that I have never visited (expressways and airports don’t count):
- Atlanta
- Detroit
- Nashville
- Memphis
- Montreal
Late-arriving post card from New York
Leta and I visited her cousin and various family in New York for the Thanksgiving holiday. It was a trip of initialisms: Sam explained all about TBIs; we rode the new R-160s, which are running on the Broadway line under a pilot program, which line Leta has taken to calling the NRBQ line. We found a nifty organic eatery in Brooklyn Heights called Siggy’s (Aliens eat free!); brunch with Dennis at Junior’s.
Museum stops for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and the new Rubin Museum of Art in Chelsea: works of art performed for the removal of physical or mental obstacles.
Various gawping at the streetscape.
Catoctin Mountain Park
I turned in my research report on Catoctin Mountain Park for my geology class last week. Unfortunately, I chose an area to write about that doesn’t have a full geologic map at the 15-minute level in print, so my coverage of the geologic structures is a little thin. And I really didn’t have time to get out to a library to check what resources were available. But I like the snapshots that I was able to incorporate into the report.
The recipe project: 2
For our family Thanksgiving dinner, I was asked to bring my spicy cranberry chutney. I’m not sure whether this is because it’s about the only holiday dish I know how to make, or because it’s the only one that my friends trust me with. At any rate, I follow this recipe from an old number of Gourmet (November 1987), which rests on the top of a short stack of similar magazines in my kitchen. It’s on the same page as a recipe for tasty cranberries in chocolate sauce that I haven’t made since my Susan days. The chutney doesn’t take too much time to make, especially if you are like me and you skimp on the chopping. I like big chunks of fruit in my chutney. Below, my paraphrase of the recipe:
Cranberry Chutney
- 1 lemon
- 1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped as fine as you care to
- 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
- 1/2 cup raisins
- 1 12-ounce bag of fresh cranberries, rinsed and picked over
- 1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, and diced (1/4 inch or so)
- 1/4 cup crystallized ginger (to be found probably somewhere in the produce section at your supermarket), chopped
- 1/2 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
Grate the lemon rind to make about 1 teaspoon. Squeeze the lemon to make about 1/4 cup of juice.
In a saucepan combine the apricots, the brown sugar, the raisins, and 1 cup water. Bring the liquid to a boil, stirring, and simmer the mixture for 5 minutes. Add the cranberries, the apple, and the lemon rind, simmer the mixture until most but not all of the cranberries have popped, about 15 or 20 minutes. Stir in the lemon juice, the ginger, and the red pepper flakes.
Serve at room temperature or chilled. Makes about 3 cups.
This last time out, I was unsure of the state of my spice rack, so I was inclined to add more pepper. But Leta took a quick taste test and assured me that half a teaspoon of pepper is good.
Inspiring
Quiet, shush, something mysterious is happening, here before us is a fifty-year-old author, on his knees at the altar of art, creating, thinking about his masterpiece, about its harmony, precision, and beauty, about its spirit and how to overcome its difficulties, and there is the expert thoroughly studying the author’s material, whereupon the masterpiece goes out into the world and to the reader, and what was conceived in utter and absolute agony is now received piecemeal, between a telephone call and a hamburger.
—Witold Gombrowicz, Ferdydurke, ch. 4, “Preface to ‘The Child Runs Deep in Filidor’”
Ferber decoded: 4
I came across the following turn of phrase in Chapter 13 of So Big. Dirk has matriculated at Midwest University (one of the few Chicago places that Ferber fictionalizes in the novel, it being an amalgam of Northwestern and the U of Chicago), and has befriended an Unclassified student, a woman in her thirties. The U catalogue describes them:
Persons at least twenty-one years of age, not seeking a degree, may be admitted through the office of the University Examiner to the courses of instruction offered by the University, as unclassified students. They shall present evidence of successful experience as a teacher or other valuable educative experience in practical life… They are ineligible for public appearance… [emphasis in original]
Aha, an early reference to what we would now call academic eligibility. But we’re not necessarily talking about playing football. A number of the Chicago Alumni Magazine from 1907 describes what a public appearance can entail:
Public appearance is defined as any inter-collegiate contest, or participation (1), in an oratorical, dramatic or musical exhibition; (2), in the official management of any other exhibition; or (3), in official service on any publication under the University name, in connection with which any admission or subscription fees are charged.
In another passage, we witness the evolution of pronunciation. Goethe Street in Chicago is pronounced in any number of ways by the locals (including something approximating the original German), GOE-thee being popular, but I’ve never heard this one:
Mrs. Emery was interested in the correct pronunciation of Chicago street names.
“It’s terrible,” she said. “I think there ought to be a Movement for the proper pronunciation. The people ought to be taught; and the children in the schools. They call Goethe Street ‘Gerty’; and pronounce all the s’s in Des Plaines. Even Illinois they call ‘Illinoise.’” (ch. 15)
