Hermenautic Circle blog

After an extended hiatus, I am once again entertaining. We have invited all the families we know to come to celebrate Halloween and go trick-or-treating in our 30 story building.

Steve wanted to just order pizzas...but I just couldn't bring myself to serve it. Not that I don't love a good slice, but not for a party. So, I'm slow-cooking a large chunk of pork shoulder dusted with cumin to shred for tacos. I'll serve it with corn tortillas and a fresh salsa. For the vegetarians, I'm boiling up a huge pot of black beans, and doing butternut squash cut into chunks, roasted with a fennel-oregano rub. I also ordered samosas, phyllo squares and those little franks in blankets from Fresh Direct.

It's 9am. I have to finish an article, clean the house, cook all the food and pick up the boys at 3:00pm. Triple espresso here I come.

I was eighteen years old, first semester in college and fresh from my Midwestern, all-girls high school. He was an upper-classman who lived two floors above me and looked at me, silently with large eyes that said more than he could in the hallways and elevators of our Big Ten university residence hall. He called. He called me on my dorm room phone. He was coming down to hang out. Cool, I thought. I wanted to hang out with him more, but was nervous as hell. They didn't teach us these things in high school. Sure, I'd thought about kissing him, but... well, I wasn't going to say anything.

He knocked on my door. We hugged, awkwardly and my stomach was churning. There wasn't much to do, so we decided to play cards - my lame idea. I didn't know Spades yet, so Go Fish it was. He would have done almost anything I said. I know that now. We sat on the carpeted dorm floor and placed bets on the game - his idea.
"If you lose, I get to kiss you"

"I'm not going to lose. I never lose," I boasted. I lost. I lost and threw a fit. Was this really about to happen? I was losing my first kiss to a game of Go Fish. You have got to be kidding me, I thought. Alright. I closed my eyes, sat there and let him do all the work.

It was awful - uncomfortable and slimy. He tried to put his tongue in my mouth and I felt violated by a simple kiss. Violation! He decided to leave. I wasn't mad, just confused. It was too much for one night. I called one of my best friends.

"What are you doing up?!"

"Carla, he kissed me."

"Are you crying?" she said. It was funny to her. It is funny. It
wasn't then.

"It wasn't special." I was waiting for that big bang, the sparks, the
fireworks.

"It takes a while." She was right. I felt better after talking to her. My friends were excited for me. My first kiss! Firsts always make me cry. Still do. But I know it's good for me. It only gets better from there.

R. Walker posted a photo:

My friend Dan sent me this exceedingly cool recipe for roasted cashews from the blog Fanatic Cook.

Must try this at home. Maybe to add to my squash-curry soup...Going to update my recipe later this week.

One of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands, Fortune & Maltese and the Phabulous Pallbearers.

There are good reasons why people have not traditionally gardened on the tops of mountains. I'm rather amazed that we managed to grow any edible food at all in our 3000-foot-elevation Catskill garden this summer; I was not surprised that a bunch of what we grew was simply inedible.

So what do you do with a big surplus of hard, flavorless tomatoes and mealy-tasting melons? Get some friends together and let the kids experiment with the marvelous force of gravity, of course!

This week's harvest smash was so much fun, I can hardly wait until our jack-o-lanterns start to rot ....

Last year I was lucky enough to go to Pop!Tech and give an incredibly geeky talk (you can see it here). How geeky was it? Well, it was called "All Your Text Are Belong To Us." (If you don't get the joke, you can rest comfortably in the knowledge that You Are Not A Geek.)

Although I wish I were in gorgeous Camden, Maine, listening to the talks in the equally gorgeous Camden Opera House, I can, like a good little blogger, watch the 2007 live webcast at home while sitting on the exercise ball that pretends it's my office chair.

I'm really looking forward to some of the presenters in particular -- Nina Jablonski sounds fascinating, and I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Harris already ...

If you haven't heard of Pop!Tech -- check it out!

[The image is a poster that was drawn during my talk by Peter Durand of Alphachimp.]

Photo by abbyladybug

Note to self: Never go on a juice fast. Will result in maddening headache, extreme hunger mixed with a large dose of the grumpies, followed by the need to strangle husband and toss children out the window.

Steve and I had high hopes for our juice fast. We bought a juicer, about twenty pounds of kale, carrots, beets, and apples from the farmer's market and hired a babysitter to come over at 5:00 so that we could take in a movie and forget about our hunger.

We started the day with a cup of miso and some green tea. For snack, we downed kale, ginger, carrot and lemons, juiced down to a small glass.

We took the children to the key park and distracted ourselves catching up with our friends as the kids played and fought. Then, Sebastien had a tempter tantrum and I started really needing a cup of coffee.

Once home Sydney began to cry because we weren't eating lunch with him. I wanted to cry too. Steve stomped around the house, banging dishes and grumbling about stupid detox plans.

Around 1:00 I started feeling extremely lethargic and, after cleaning up the kids lunch dishes and putting Sebastien down for a nap and plopping Sydney in front of a tivo'd Scooby Doo, I fell into a restless, sweaty, miserable sleep. By 3:00, Steve and I were counting the minutes until the sitter arrived and downing more juice, followed by green tea in an effort to clear our heads and rid ourselves of the pounding pain in our temples.

We argued and bickered about who cleaned what when. We juiced. We drank miso broth.

By 5:00, when the sitter arrived, we were about to rip each other's hair out. A night out alone together, for the first time in over a month, was too precious to spend hungry and pissed off. So we ditched the fast, feeling slightly guilty, and headed over to this vegan restaurant in the East Village called Angelica's Kitchen for some steamed veggies and brown rice and corn bread with this crazy-good spread. Fasting just isn't for us.

Afterwards, with our bellies filled and our sanity restored, we went to see that new George Clooney movie that I can't remember the title of. It was great.

The Miso-Tahini Spread That Brought Us Back From the Edge

Recipe from Angelica's Kitchen Cookbook

1/3 Cup mellow barley miso
1/2 cup water
1 1/3 cup tahini

Combine the miso with 1/2-cup water in a food processor. Puree until creamy.
Add tahini and process until smooth.

Cover and refrigerate. It will keep up to 5 days.

I often talk about how some words seem to hover in the ether (or aether, if you prefer) and will themselves into being, often by jumping into multiple brains near-simultaneously. And now I have a great example of this phenomenon, which I can share with you.

I just (and by 'just', I mean 'in the past several weeks') got a lovely email from Anthony Durity, in response to my TED talk, and letting me know a word he invented, ygology. Ygology, is, of course, the study of palindromes.

Now, I thought, that's a cool word. Let's Google it. So I did, and found some competing coinage claims.

Which, frankly, only makes sense. Knowing what a palindrome is, and knowing the suffix -ology, ygology was inevitable. It had to be born; English almost demanded it.

It's probably possible (with some taking of depositions) to determine exactly who first used ygology, and when, and in response to what ... but why bother? We have the word, which is the important thing, after all. I think coining claims should be like Nobels; nobody minds if two or three people win one together.

The illustration above is an ambigram, a kind of visual palindrome, done by John Langdon. Check out his website!

I got to sub for the wonderful Jan Freeman and camp out in her usual space at the Boston Globe today -- here's the column I wrote about antedating. (Registration may be required, or you can try BugMeNot.com for a password if you prefer not to register.)

Thanks again to Grant Barrett and Ben Zimmer for all their help and great examples ...

(Don't worry, it doesn't have anything to do with the Geico Cavemen.)

I’ve always wondered why anyone with taste would pay thousands of dollars to publish one of those text-heavy, type-awful, full-page magazine advertisements void of any semblance of graphic design nuance or sophistication.

My kids, like most exuberant children of their age, love to disarrange the universe. They stack blocks with the principal goal of knocking them down; they pour paint with the hope of maximally mixing and sliming it; they delight in scattering, smashing, and taking things apart.

I, however, like to build things. And only recently have I found it possible to include them -- really include them -- in my projects.

Last weekend was something of a breakthrough, as they assisted, off and on, in the latter stages of constructing a bean house for next summer's garden at our cabin upstate. This year, we had a bean tunnel -- metal fencing in a big arch, with thick vines of pole beans climbing up it. They found it initially delightful but ultimately too small, so I decided to repurpose some old bookshelves into a grander frame for next year's bean crop.

I started the project, I will admit, in their absence. But I realized that, so long as I had already worked the design out in my head and was feeling sufficiently patient, there were lots of things they could do to assist.

They steadied boards while I sawed, studied my miter box with utter fascination, even did a bit of sawing themselves. Then I got out the drill, and they were in heaven, helping me screw the boards together.

When they became restless, I gave them a couple of levels to play with, which occupied them for a good long time. When even that failed, I got out a big jumbled tray of different-sized screws and set them to work sorting them out.

What were they learning? Some physics and math, to be sure. Maybe even some rudimentary carpentry. But more than that, I hope, they were learning something more basic about the satisfaction of creating something yourself, the magic of transforming raw materials into something new and wondrous.

I think they felt some of this magic, for they were so excited as the house was taking shape that they insisted we eat dinner in it that very night, with boards perched in the corners for seats. We sat sharing a scruffy meal of chicken sausages as darkness fell, and watched together as first the planets and then the countless stars appeared in the clear sky overhead.

The next day, we moved the half-finished structure into our garden, dug a level base for it, and added the frame for the roof. The kids helped plant grass seed for the floor; in the spring, we'll attach some sort of mesh to the sides to function as a trellis, then plant bean seeds and bright marigolds in the built-in boxes all around it. I'm not sure who is anticipating this more eagerly, me or them.

It is now a Design Observer tradition to host the best party at the AIGA Biennal Conference. This year's event is in Denver at The Milk Bar @ The Shelter. Friday, October 12 from 9:00pm to 2:00am. 1037 Broadway, "South of Colfax Nightlife District."

Trick your children into eating more vegetables with this “pumpkin” soup recipe. You can use a combo of any winter squash available. I used acorn squash ( “green pumpkin”) and a red kuri squash, which I roasted for an hour then blended with coconut milk and a teaspoon of mellow curry paste. Curry paste can be replaced with the warm spice of cinnamon and nutmeg if your little ones veer towards the fussy.

1 small acorn squash
1 small red kuri squash or pumpkin
2 tbsp Olive Oil
Salt
1 can coconut milk (my mom tells me coconut oil is very beneficial for the skin and vital organs so I go with the full-fat kind)
1 tsp mild curry paste or curry powder to taste
OR 1/2 tsp cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg
1/4 cup cilantro
Hot Sesame Oil


Preheat stove to 400 degrees.

Slice each squash in half. Scoop out seeds and discard or clean and roast pumpkin seeds for a pepita topping (I’m too lazy).

Sprinkle half a tbsp of oil into each cavity and spread with clean fingers. Sprinkle with as much salt as you can handle (I’m such a fan of salt) and then place them, skin side down, onto a roasting pan and bake for about an hour (check after 45 minutes if squash are small).

When done cooking, let cool for a few minutes on the counter while you heat up coconut milk and curry in a large soup pot. Carefully remove flesh from the skin of the squash and place into coconut milk mixture. Add about two cups of water for a smooth texture. Turn heat off and have your children help puree soup with a hand-blender if you have the patience. Ladle into bowls and top with chopped cilantro. Dot adult soups with hot sesame oil, found in the Asian food isle.

Serve with goat cheese or cheddar cheese quesadillas.

"Hey Jean, How are your dinner parties going?" was how my former food studies professor Amy Bently, who happens to live in the same NYU faculty housing as we do, greeted me the other day. Bently was dressed in running attire, haired pulled back, headed back home after a jog.

"Ugh, well, I'm kind of taking a break for a little while." I stammered. I was slightly nervous, as book proposal on the same topic was part of my final thesis, and I had failed to sell the book.

"The other day I was cooking for friends and wondering how you managed to do it. It's completely exhausting"

"Yes, well, you should see what happens when you invite the heavy drinkers over," mainly referring to myself and my penchant for a nice Cotes du Rhone.

"Well, good luck with everything." She walked purposefully off to her next important meeting or event and I was left to think about my life on the street. Am I going to abandon the project?

Which of course got me thinking: why haven't I thrown any dinner parties since we got back from White Salmon, WA? Was is the weight gain, the wine, the three big dinners cooked for friends and family each week? Was it the transition to being home again after such an extended time? Getting back to real life now that both boys are in school?

Probably yes to all the above.

The good news is that the experiment worked. Cooking for other people at least twice a month, definately made me feel like I was a part of a larger community.

On the negative end, all of my pants are extremely tight and my self and my bank account are yearning to refocus my energies on my writing career. I feel like I need to be burried in a mudbath at Canyon Ranch, not elbow-deep in butter, preparing my next 3-course meal.

When I was in junior high I won two awards for my class: best dressed and most dramatic. And while my wardrobe may have suffered as the years have continued, certainly the drama label still applies. So how do I do dinner parties and at-home entertaining without feeling burned out and bloated?

Like any good self-help addict, I turn to the step system:

1. Do a 3-5 day cleanse recommended and lead by the acupuncturist to the beauty industry gals, Laura Kauffmann.

2. Lay off the wine and cheese.

3. Take it one dinner party at a time. We are throwing a large Halloween party this year. For now, that is enough.

Officially published for the first time as a posthumous tribute: a loving parody of the writing of the late, great architectural critic Herbert Muschamp.

Hosted By: Matthew De AbaituaWhen: 18 Oct 2007, 18:30Where: Queen Boadicea 292-294 St John Street, Clerkenwell London, EC1V4PAUnited KingdomDescription:Matthew De Abaitua Click Here To View Event...

Why does the art that adds so much to the texts published in The New York Times disappear? Why cannot The New York Times simply index the art that it publishes, at least leaving the bibliographic tracings of the work in their newspaper?

The first hundred or so times we read our kids Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type -- Doreen Cronin's wonderful tale of barnyard subversion -- we slightly edited it into a tale of cows who find an old computer in the barn, because we knew Nini and Desmond had never seen or heard of a typewriter.

Happily, that has changed, big time, and I've become a typewriter evangelist: If you've got a child old enough to peck at a keyboard, do your kid a favor and hunt down an old typewriter at your very earliest opportunity.

We started with a portable Underwood manual typewriter I found at the Oneonta Salvation Army, and I cannot imagine a more ideal plaything for a young child. It's sublime in all the ways a kid wants a machine to be: sleek, virtually indestructible, with all sorts of fascinating buttons and moving parts whose operations are directly visible to the eye. A three-year-old can pound on it to her heart's content, and the worst thing that happens is the keys clump up into an easily separated jumble.

What's more, a typewriter has a quality that's precious to children, and too often beyond their reach: realness. Kids are much more captivated by actual devices than by simplified kiddie versions. Past a certain wee age, they'd readily, for example, choose a battered actual screwdriver over a shiny painted wooden one, a real vacuum cleaner over a buzzy toy one; they would clearly prefer your real cellphone over some bright plastic beeping thing that spouts the same irritating three lines over and over.

And without a doubt, once your child is interested in the alphabet and the very beginnings of reading and writing, a typewriter is a delightful tool. My kids will spend a solid hour or more asking us how to spell various words and patiently hunting down the letters on the keyboard. They can't write letters on paper yet, but they can now spell out their names whenever they want, and see the results. And unlike when they want to do this with the computer, we don't have to be right next to them, terrified that some crucial part of the hard drive will be destroyed through youthful exuberance: You pretty much don't have to say "no" to a kid who is playing with a typewriter.

Eventually, since my kids are also fascinated by everything having to do with electricity, we got them an electric typewriter, too -- one of those early word processing types where the words show up on a screen before they're typed onto the paper. Alas, the ribbon that was in it quickly ran out, so for the moment, it's out of service. If you're like us, you'll probably end up spending more money on new ribbons for your ancient machine than you paid for it in the first place. Never fear, though, they can be found: For our Underwood, we even got our hands on one of those ribbons that types in black and red.

I'll be reading for six minutes around 4:30 p.m. tomorrow afternoon at the San Francisco Public Library’s Koret Auditorium (Main Branch, 100 Larkin Street). It's a FREE event.

The other women reading between 4:00 and 5:00 are:

Wendy Tokunaga
Jennifer Solow
April Sinclair
Susan Steinberg
[I go on right here]
Elizabeth Rosner
Megan Seely

You can find the full schedule here:
http://www.litquake.org/

And I have NO IDEA what I'm reading yet.

Hope to see you there!
Lynn