Welcome to Five O'Clock Somewhere, where it doesn't matter what time zone you're in; it's five o'clock somewhere. We'll look at rural life, especially as it happens in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, cats, sailing (particularly Etchells racing yachts), and bits of grammar and Victorian poetry.
It is time once again to celebrate Cat Herders Day, the official holiday of Five O’Clock Somewhere, tomorrow, December 15. Those of my followers in Europe are already enjoying the holiday.
The holiday was originally invented by a couple in California who have made up other wacky, offbeat holidays to celebrate. The date for this one, I’m sure, is a reflection on how busy most of us are at this time of year, with shopping, holiday arrangements, parties, entertaining, decorating, cooking, wrapping gifts, shipping gifts, writing and mailing holiday cards, traveling, coping with nasty weather, and sometimes also finishing up an academic semester or term with the accompanying final exams or portfolios and the grading thereof. Even those whose households are devoid of felines may feel like they’re herding cats.
Then there are those who are literally herding cats. Perhaps they have a house full of the critters. Perhaps they’ve taken an interest in a colony of feral cats, possibly even going to the trouble of participating in trap-neuter-release programs to reduce population growth and improve the health of cats in the colony. Perhaps they volunteer for a local animal shelter, fostering cats who need more special care than they can get in a shelter environment or providing kittens with a highly interactive environment to help them learn the socialization skills that will help them to get adopted.
This year, I’ve set up an event on Facebook for Cat Herders Day. You’re invited to come and share the ways you will be celebrating the day. You may post photos of the cats you herd and share your own cat-herding experiences, or if you don’t herd any cats yourself, express your admiration for those who do.
Of course, the Byrnes cat herd is small, consisting of only two cats.
Dulce was adopted in January 1997 from the organization now known as Animal Humane New Mexico. She had been picked up as a starving stray in a blizzard in Edgewood the previous Thanksgiving. She has been living in the lap of luxury ever since, and after all these years, I doubt she has any memory of her deprived early years.
Scratch came last year from the City of Albuquerque Animal Welfare Department, and his beginnings were happier. Although he and his littermates were turned over to the shelter, they were placed in a foster home where they socialized not only with humans but with many other animals, so he was a totally friendly and outgoing young cat. Gerald hadn’t intended to adopt a cat, but Scratch picked him out at an event in the parking lot of a local sporting-goods store.
So my thanks go out to the cat herders whose efforts led to two wonderful cats ending up in our household.
Don't bait your English teacher; you may regret it
My National Novel Writing Month adventures continue. I've fallen behind in my word count, so I'm trying to catch up. In this excerpt, Hannah has given her class an exercise similar to the one that I give in this post, in creating descriptive writing that aims to show, rather than tell, a highly emotional moment in the students' past. In case you're wondering, yes, this sort of thing has actually happened to me, more than once. And no, I didn't respond quite as, um, graphically as Hannah does -- much as I would have liked to -- or I probably wouldn't still have my job. But I did respond in a toned-down version of Hannah's response. Since this is an all-ages blog, I'm also redacting what the student actually wrote.
When she got to the end of the descriptive writing exercise, she had one student volunteer to read his piece, a student who had been something of a class clown while completing almost no homework and turning in essays that were so under-developed that they were really just outlines. As he stood to read, he and the other members of his group started to snicker. He held up his paper, on which Hannah could see he had scrawled only a couple of lines, and began to read: “I went in the room with the girl and she took her clothes off and laid down on the bed. I took my clothes off and laid on top of her, and then I ----ed her and she said she liked it and I did it again and she said I was the best that she ever had and it was my first time.”
By the time he got to the end of his reading, his group-mates were having a hard time containing themselves, but the student himself was looking less and less sure of himself, his voice becoming weaker and his face turning red. Hannah guessed he was now beginning to regret that his buddies had talked him into this. Still, she knew the original plan the the four of them had hatched was probably intended to shock her or otherwise disrupt her composure. She decided to take the offering with a straight face. “Surely you can do better than that,” she said. “We want description, and you had only two adjectives and only two adverbs in that entire piece – and two of those were in what the girl said to you. Since it was your first time, surely your memory of it was more vivid than that.
“What did the girl look like? Short? Tall? Young? Old? What color was her hair, blonde, brunette, red? Was it natural, or did she have roots of another color? Was she fat or skinny? What did her body look like after she took off her clothes – and what sort of clothes were they in the first place? How did you meet her, at a party or on the street or in a brothel? What did you say to each other before you went to the room? What kind of room was it – a motel room, the girl’s bedroom in her parents’ house, some other sort of room? What condition was the room in – was it clean, dirty, with new furnishings or beat-up stuff? What did the air smell like, musty, smoky, flowery air freshener? Was the air in the room cold or hot or just right? Was the lighting dim or bright?
“When you got into the bed with her, what did she smell like – was it some sort of perfume or just sweat or something else? What did the bed sheets smell like – were they clean, or did they smell sour from being used a whole lot since they were last washed? Were they smooth or rough? Did the bed springs creak when you moved? Did the girl make any sounds? When she told you that she liked it and that you were the best that she had ever had, what were her exact words? How did she say them? Did she have any sort of accent?”
Hannah knew that this line of questioning was perhaps a bit cruel. But what she wanted to get across was that vivid descriptions were essential to effective writing, no matter what the subject matter. She knew the old saying about people with inadequate vocabularies being the ones who resorted to obscenities, and perhaps that was the case with this student. She was hoping that thinking a little more deeply would lead the student to write a little more deeply. This was a student who turned in essays that were three-quarters of a page long, triple spaced, and she was trying to get him to stretch a bit. If he wanted to write porn, more power to him, if doing so helped him to provide descriptive words and phrases.
The student was now seriously red-faced, as were his group-mates. The rest of the class had mixed reactions. Some had gone red, some had gone pale, and a few had started laughing, especially a couple of the young women in the class who had previously found this student’s behavior annoying or maybe even offensive. They clearly enjoyed seeing him get some comeuppance.
“Um, Ms. Montgomery,” the student said in a somewhat subdued voice, “I’ll have to get back to you on those answers.”
It’s time for that annual ritual, in which I flog myself until I’ve cranked out 50,000 words in 30 days or less, participating in National Novel Writing Month. As usual, I’m writing a mystery, featuring Hannah Montgomery, community college English instructor and amateur sleuth, into whose life dead bodies continue to fall. In this installment, she’s working on planning her wedding to police Detective Harry O’Malley. Here is the first installment, cranked out in the first half-hour of Nov. 1.
Murder in the Photo Lab
a novel
by Carol Anne Byrnes
1.Plans Afoot
Hannah Montgomery sighed wearily as she pushed herself back from her desk, shoving a lock of fine blonde hair from her face. She was supposed to be grading papers, but it wasn’t working so well. Her mind kept wandering off to other topics, like the wedding. How was she going to pull that off? She knew that most people planned for a year or more, and here she was, trying to do it in just a couple of months. So far, almost nothing was coming together. There was the catering for the reception, the rental of the banquet hall from the yacht club, hairstyling to think of, makeup, arrangements for lodging for out of town guests, trying to find a band to play at the reception, or at least a DJ, and she was sure she was forgetting something. At least the wedding dress seemed to be on track; she had already had a rough fitting, although the final adjustments would wait until just a couple of days in advance, to fit her rapidly growing baby bump perfectly on the big day.
Her phone rang, and she answered it. “Hello?”
“Hi, dear, it’s Clara.” Hannah recognized the voice of her soon-to-be mother-in-law. “I was wondering if you’d arranged a photographer for the wedding portraits yet?”
Oh, no, that’s what she’d been forgetting, Hannah realized. “Uh, no,” she said. “That, uh, had sort of slipped my mind.”
“Don’t worry, dear,” Clara said. “I have an old friend from high school who’s out there, Lionel Eggleston, who’s a photography professor at Siete Mares State. Or at least he used to be. He’s now sort of retired, what they call ‘emeritus.’ I asked him if he’d do your wedding, and he said he would. I’ll pay – count it as a wedding gift to you and Harry.”
Well, that was a piece of good news, Hannah reflected. One piece of wedding planning that she’d forgotten, and it was going to be taken care of without much trouble on her part. “Oh, thank you very much,” she said. “That would be fantastic!” She hoped Clara couldn’t hear the note of desperation in her voice.
“There is one thing,” Clara said. “Lionel doesn’t like the new-fangled photography.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” Hannah said. If Professor Eggleston didn’t like digital photography, well, that would mean her and Harry’s wedding portraits would be more traditional.
“No, I don’t think you understand,” Clara said. “Lionel doesn’t like that new-fangled dry film. He uses wet plates. Says it gives him a more honest look. You’ll likely have to sit very very still for a long while when you pose, and then making the prints will take a long time.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem,” Hannah said. Actually, having an excuse to sit very very still for a while sounded pretty good. She had been running around so much lately, trying to tie up all of the loose ends. “Having wedding portraits that are totally different from anybody else’s will be something special.”
“Oh, they’ll be special all right,” Clara said. “Lionel is known for his cyanotypes. They have a lovely blue shade to them.”
The lucky person who happened to be the 100,000th person to cross the threshold of this blog was a seeker of knowledge. He or she is a Road Runner subscriber from Cincinnati, using Windows NT/Vista and the most recent version of the world's worst browser, late Monday evening, on a search for "find out what part of speech rescue is."
For quite some time, I've wanted to visit Cincinnati. A very good friend of mine from high school now lives there (actually, just across the river in Kentucky), and I've been told that Cincinnati chili (pictured above) is a dish not to be missed.
I even know where I want to go to eat in Cincinnati. The very first year I participated in National Novel Writing Month, my attempt at a novel (it reached more than 50,000 words, but it never reached a conclusion) was not one of the mystery novels I have been successful with since then. It was an ensemble-cast action-adventure thriller, and the adventure began in Cincinnati. Since I've never been there, I researched the place and found out a lot of wonderful things about it. The railroad station is an Art Deco masterpiece that has been preserved as a science and technology museum, while still serving as an active passenger depot. The downtown area has been revitalized and is a hopping place day or night. And there are places to eat.
I looked at restaurant reviews. I had two scenes involving my narrator eating out. In one scene, he had a casual lunch downtown, and I found just the right place for him to chow down on the most authentic Cincy chili available (served over noodles, with cheese and onions on top). It was a bonus that John Madden endorsed the place on Monday Night Football the following night. For the other scene, my character needed a really classy place to eat, and I found an Italian place with great atmosphere and, according to the reviews I read, a chef who believes, as I do, that there is no such thing as too much garlic.
So, while I did have a couple of good suggestions from readers for what the prize should be, I have decided that Pat and I will travel to the winner's location and treat him or her to his or her favorite meal. Cincinnati was already tentatively on the itinerary for next summer anyway, since I want to visit my old friend. Assuming the winner comes back to claim the prize, I hope he or she likes either Cincinnati chili or Italian food -- although I wouldn't mind trying anything else the winner likes.
To be fair to both of the entrants in the contest, I will extend the same prize: Pat and I, when next in your neighborhood (or neighbourhood), will treat you to a dinner of your favorite local food.
Oh, and as for the answer to the question for which the winner came seeking an answer: rescue can be a noun, a verb, or an adjective.
Noun: The firefighters attempted a daring rescue.
Verb: They had only a few minutes to rescue the cat from the tree.
Adjective: The cat's owners thanked the rescue personnel warmly afterward.
This blog is about to reach a historic milestone. As I start to type this post, Sitemeter has registered 99,677 visitors. That means, in just a few days, I will be seeing the 100,000th visitor to this blog.
To mark the event, I want to provide a really cool prize to Visitor #100K. In the past, I've offered such things as dinner at my favorite brewpub or a sailing trip on Black Magic, but, alas, nobody has yet made it to New Mexico to claim such a prize.
So, I'm open to suggestions. To sweeten the deal, not only will I grant the prize to Visitor #100K, but also to whoever comes up with the winning suggestion. So, let the writing project begin. You have from now until whenever lucky Number 100,000 shows up.
The few people who frequent this blog might have noticed a lack of activity lately. That’s primarily because Pat and I have been on the road for most of the past three weeks. For a detailed travelogue, including pictures, you can look at Pat’s blog, Desert Sea, where he’s gradually putting up posts about the journey. I’ll just touch on highlights here.
The trip seemed to have two major themes: barbeque and detours. Just about every day, we had at least one great barbeque experience – when I travel, I want to sample the best of the local food, and we kept stumbling on great barbeque places. And just about every day, sometimes multiple times in a day, we ended up someplace we didn’t intend to be, sometimes because of road construction, sometimes because of our unfamiliarity with the territory, and sometimes because of a little of both.
Barbeque, May 2: OK, this doesn’t officially count as part of the journey, but we had lunch at JR’s Bar-B-Que in Albuquerque with the guy who was helping his buddy sell the fifth-wheel trailer we just bought, and exchanged a check for the title to the trailer.
Detour, May 2: Not a really big deal, but our favorite motel in Gallup had no non-smoking rooms available, so we had to spring for a suite.
Barbeque, May 3: Big Belly’s BBQ in Tempe, run by former ASU and KC Chiefs defensive tackle Bryan Proby, serves up massive portions of KC style barbeque. I didn’t have enough appetite for it this trip, but I’ve been told the giant potato is an experience I should have at least once in my lifetime.
Detour, May 6: This one was on purpose. On our way to the cruise on Saguaro Lake, we went to Arizona Cactus Sales to see what we might want to put into the landscaping if we buy a house in the Phoenix area – many of the properties we’ve been looking at have been bank-owned or otherwise neglected, and so the landscape is pretty much dead. We’d want to put in water-conserving landscaping, rather than recreating Scottish golf courses in the desert. We learned a lot about cacti and how to take care of them – which mostly means leaving them alone and absolutely not watering them or planting them anywhere water is likely to drain.
Barbeque, May 7: Right near our motel in Bakersfield was The Grill Hut. The menu is extremely limited (beef tri-tip or chicken breast, plus sauces and sides), but what they do, they do very well.
Detour, May 8: Trying to get from the Nimitz Freeway to Alameda Island is insane. The bridges that go to the island are not lined up with the roads the freeway exits lead to, and there’s road construction that makes things really “interesting” – such as semi-trucks turning left from an extremely narrow roadway bounded by Jersey bouncewall into another extremely narrow roadway bounded by Jersey bouncewall, during the extremely brief green-light interval of the temporary traffic light suspended from flimsy cables above the intersection, such that one truck takes three cycles of the light to complete its turn because of all of the other drivers who try to get around the behemoth and end up getting in its way, so it has to halt until they figure out that they have to back up to get out of its way. Apparently, “reverse” is not a setting that exists on the shift levers of most Californians’ cars.
Detour, May 10: Visited a friend on his boat in Marina Bay in Richmond, and then sort of got lost on the way out. Found the cheapest gas in the East Bay area, and also the mini-mart that was featured in the movie “True Crime.” Didn’t go in to see whether the potato-chip display had been moved.
Detour, May 11: Needed to do some financial transactions involving our credit union, so we used the credit-union branch-sharing network to find a participating CU in Berkeley. Google Maps got us there, but not back. We ended up taking a scenic tour of Berkeley and Oakland, including Chinatown, that we hadn’t intended.
Barbeque, May 11: We had already looked at our schedule for our time in the Bay Area and saw that the best time for us to hook up with family was Wednesday evening. My brother had the suggestion that maybe we could meet at Sam’s Bar-B-Que in San Jose, where our cousin often plays with a bluegrass band, Dark Hollow. As it turns out, the band was playing there that night, so my cousin saved us a table and we had a great time. The band played “Detour,” written by Paul Westmoreland and played by Spade Cooley, then subsequently by Patti Page and Willie Nelson, among others.
Detour, May 12: We had a coupon. We were hungry. We wanted seafood. Gerald’s Droid told us that Panama Joe’s atmosphere was “boisterous” but the noise level was “moderate.” I guess it depends what you mean by “moderate”; it was college night.
Barbeque, May 13: OK, we didn’t get to eat this, but our motel room was suffused with the aroma. We were right around the corner from the laundry room, which was also the housekeeping staff’s lunch room. Beneath the open window, they had set up a little electric grill, and the bulgogi smelled heavenly.
Barbeque, May 14: Free hot dogs and beer at the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club open house. Those folks are really proud of their new elevator, which is done up inside like a fine yacht, with wood paneling and cabin sole. We’ve been told that Black Magic used to be part of the Etchells fleet there.
Detour, May 14: Met Silver Girl and visited the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, then took an extended side trip to the Coyote Grill in Laguna Beach.
Detour, May 15: Sunday Brunch on the Queen Mary, followed by wandering all over the ship for several hours. We only got lost a couple of times …
Detour, May 16: Dropped Gerald off with the ASU sailing team for several days’ training at the US Sailing Center in Long Beach and made it out of the LA area with only one or two wrong turns along the way. Made it to Tempe, dropped off a couple of things and picked up a couple of things at Gerald’s apartment.
Detour, May 17: Less than an hour from home, we saw smoke rising and lots of red flashing lights up ahead. We got off the freeway onto Old Route 66 and meandered through the village of Paraje before getting back onto the freeway, which we then had all to ourselves until we got to the outskirts of Albuquerque.
Detour, May 18-20: You thought we were done traveling? Nope. First, Pat went to Los Alamos to pick up Dulce, who had been getting royal spa treatment at my folks’ house (dinner whenever she wanted it, an electric blanket to sleep on at night, and other general spoiling). Then we took the big truck (Enterprise) south to pick up the fifth-wheel trailer and learn how it works.
Detour, May 21: I had been scheduled to teach only one class during the summer term, but I was given the opportunity Friday to add another – this one on the West Side campus, where I haven’t taught before. Pat and I took a scenic drive to assess the layout of the place, and man, is it far away!
Today: No detours, but maybe some barbeque – chicken “wings” from JJ’s (they’re actually thighs, and therefore really meaty) should go well with the hockey game. Now I’m getting hungry!
Some of my students wrote such great essays in response to the cuisine topic that I have asked them to allow me to share their work here. The first (but I hope not the last) to respond to my request is Phil Coen, who wrote a review of his favorite restaurant. OK, so it’s hard to get to – if you ask Google Maps how to get there from New Mexico, one leg of the journey involves getting into a kayak. But then, part of what makes this restaurant a great place is that it’s located somewhere that … well, you have to cross some water to get there.
A Bit of Happiness by Phil Coen
When people ask me what my favorite restaurant is, I always hesitate and think about the wonderful memories of so many places, but, in the end, I always answer without a doubt that it would have to be Holuakoa Garden. When I am looking for a good restaurant, I am looking for several things; first of all would be the atmosphere. I look for the overall feel of the place, whether it is comfortable and whether I feel at home, as if I belong here. Next, I think about howthe food tastes in combination with the presentation of the dishes. Finally I analyze the experience and evaluate whether or not it was worth the price.
What makes Holuakoa Garden stand out from all the other restaurants that I’ve been to is the ambiance of the restaurant. The restaurant has a romantic feel from its small waterfall to the freshness of the gardens in the middle of the restaurant. The ambiance creates a relaxing dream-like state of mind. All that would be enough to set the full experience Holuakoa Garden has to offer apart, but Holuakoa Garden is located on the side of a mountain overlooking a breathtaking ocean view. I would recommend that you go there at sunset, to get the full experience Holuakoa Garden has to offer. Most of the restaurant is outside, giving it an open unrestrained feel with lovely smells of all the local flowers of Hawaii.
Being in an outstanding setting is only a small part of Holuakoa Garden, for the culinary masterpieces were worthy of a king’s last meal. When I had the pleasure of eating there, I started off with a caprese salad. The salad was one-of-a-kind, involving fresh heirloom tomatoes and basil from the restaurant’s own garden, topped with a type of balsamic vinegar dressing, pine nuts and of course the mozzarella . The tomatoes made this salad because they were sweet, ripe and juicy, maintaining a bright red and yellow tint. I was left wanting more and wondering, if a salad can be that good, what type of masterpiece did I have to look forward to next?
I ordered the filet mignon since the island was famous for the beef because of the quality of grass due to the volcanic soil. It was something I had been looking forward to the entire trip, so I felt it was a now or never moment. Knowing that I was anticipating a moment of genius from the chef, the staff took its time, building on the anticipation of the upcoming entrée. This made my anticipation of the entrée all that more magical. The filet mignon was artistically centered on the platter with an array of colorful vegetables and potatoes, and lightly drizzled with a savory balsamic reduction making the entrée like a painting. The filet mignon was cooked perfectly to my individual taste. There was nothing that I would change, making for a perfect entrée.
What better way to end a perfect meal than with a special dessert? Earlier in the day I had been hiking in the Hawaiian forests and came across a fruit called lilikoi. After hearing the dessert menu I knew that having a cheesecake with this fruit would be amazing. To bring the night to an eventful close I ordered something I knew would be amazing. When I finally got the dessert, it lived up to my expectations and, in fact, exceeded them. The cheesecake was able to satisfy not only the desire to have something amazing but to have an adventure come to a memorable closing.
In conclusion, I recommend this restaurant to anybody that is visiting the Big Island of Hawaii. The only regrettable thing about this restaurant is that it is so difficult to return to, to be able to enjoy it once more. I’ll always have a desire to go back, to enjoy not only the wonderful food, but the ambience and landscape that went with it.
All right, so the turnout for the invitation to write about cuisine was less than spectacular. We had a total of four entries, by three contributors.
First, we had Tillerman with his entry answering New Mexico’s Official State Question: “Red or Green?”
Next, O Docker popped up with “A Kernel of Truth,” technically past the deadline, but close enough.
So then, I extended the project deadline in hopes of getting more entries. Captain JP came in with two, both having to do with coffee: “My favourite drink” and “Alas poor cafetiere.”
Thanks to the three who entered. But, dear readers, you may not have heard the last of this topic. Some of my students wrote great essays, and I plan to invite them to submit their work as guest posts. We’ll see what cooks up.
OK, so the official deadline has passed for my latest writing challenge. I got one entry before the deadline, from Tillerman, with his own take on New Mexico's Official State Question, "Red or Green?"
In addition, I had one other entry that missed the deadline for the Pacific time zone, but which I allowed because O Docker made a persuasive argument that it's always 11:55 somewhere: "A Kernel of Truth," exploring the nature of popcorn.
Given the paucity of entries, I'm giving Tillerman and O Docker extra-credit points, but I'm extending the deadline for entries until April 15.
Essay 4 (in-class)
Choose one of the following topics and write an essay that meets the English 0950 course objectives (clear main idea, good support, consideration for an educated reader, organization, reasonably correct mechanics):
·What is your favorite cuisine? Give details to explain why.
·Define “American cuisine.” What sets American cuisine apart from others?
·How does the enjoyment of food bring people together? Give examples from your own experience and/or from materials you have read.
·Red or green? Explain.
·Write a review of your favorite restaurant. Use details and examples to show the reader why he or she should eat there.
·In what way does the cuisine of a country or region reflect its culture? Show the connection using specific details.
The basics: Write a blog post and put a link in the comments here, or if you don't have a blog, send your entry in email to byrnes.carol.anne (at) gmail.com . It doesn't have to be an academic essay (my definition of that format is pretty broad anyway); just write what you want to write.
So far, I've had a grand total of ... uh ... zero entries in the current writing challenge. With only 24 hours to go, that's not exactly a great turnout.
To recap, the challenge was to write a blog post in response to an essay prompt that I used in my essay writing class this term. The students had chosen an unusual topic, cuisine, instead of the oft-used contemporary social or political issues. So I thought I'd open it out to my readers and see what you could come up with. Unless you're actually enrolled in a college-prep essay writing course, you don't need to constrain yourself to what you might consider to be an essay (although I actually have a pretty broad definition); instead, write in response to the prompt in whatever way you feel moved.
So, write a blog post and put a link to it in the comments here, or if you don't have a blog, send your entry in email to byrnes.carol.anne (at) gmail.com and I'll post it here. Deadline is midnight (in whatever time zone you're in) March 31.
Essay 4 (in-class)
Choose one of the following topics and write an essay that meets the English 0950 course objectives (clear main idea, good support, consideration for an educated reader, organization, reasonably correct mechanics):
·What is your favorite cuisine? Give details to explain why.
·Define “American cuisine.” What sets American cuisine apart from others?
·How does the enjoyment of food bring people together? Give examples from your own experience and/or from materials you have read.
·Red or green? Explain.
·Write a review of your favorite restaurant. Use details and examples to show the reader why he or she should eat there.
·In what way does the cuisine of a country or region reflect its culture? Show the connection using specific details.
For the past few years, Pat and I have been operating on an austerity budget. Part of that program has meant that I haven't had much in the way of new clothes for a very long time -- we've been shopping at thrift stores for most clothes. But now, at long last, I have the first pair of actual new shoes that I have had in about five years. And they're magnificent: delightful little black numbers that fit my feet like gloves, but with just enough extra stretch that in really cold conditions I can wear a pair of wool socks underneath.
Especially over on Facebook, many friends, including old high-school classmates, have reveled in their shoes -- how many they have, the special virtues of each pair, the stylishness, the excitement of finding just the right pair. Now, I can join them.
Meanwhile, it's not just my feet but also my boat, Black Magic, that is enjoying the end of austerity. We came down to Elephant Butte Friday with the hope of sailing with Zorro as well as working on boats. As it turned out, it was too windy to sail. First, I helped Zorro with patching some cracks in Constellation's deck and re-rigging the outhaul, which had been fouling far too often. Then Pat joined Zorro and me at the mast-up storage lot where Black Magic is, and we replaced a lot of the rigging: backstay control, mainsheet, jib sheet, traveler (including some blocks and other hardware), jib tack, mast block shock cords, and tiller tamer. Zorro also mixed up some epoxy filler, which he used to patch up some gouges in the keel as well as some dents in the deck.
Saturday, we had hoped that at least in the morning, we could get in some sailing; the weather forecasts predicted a breezy morning and a windy afternoon. But it was blustery from the get-go, much too windy for sailing. Zorro did some work on Constellation while Pat and I paid a visit to our favorite used-book store in the universe, Black Cat Books in Truth or Consequences. Gerald has a rule of thumb that a used-book store is not a proper used-book store unless there is a cat on the premises. I think I agree. Pat and I ended up getting a wide range of books, including a German grammar book, a collection of essays about what it means to be human in a technological environment, and a James Patterson (plus one of his more trustworthy co-authors, Maxine Paetro) thriller.
After that, Pat and I stopped by the hardware store to look for bolts to use when replacing the old cam cleats on the boat. In stainless steel, the longest bolts the store had were two inches, so we bought only four, two flathead and two pan-head, with the idea that whichever fit best, we could come back and buy more, and if neither fit, we weren't out much money.
Then Pat and I returned to Black Magic, where Pat set about working on replacing the old cam cleats on the console with the new ones that we had ordered. The old cleats were ancient and decaying even when we first got the boat, but we had never had time or money to replace them all -- when one of them failed, we put a new one in, and we kept saying that we needed to get them all replaced. It took Pat 20 minutes to remove just one cleat. We discovered that flathead bolts were the best for the new cam cleats, but two inches was too short -- we needed three-inch bolts.
Meanwhile, Zorro had done some more work on Constellation but had learned that the Sunday weather forecast was for even more wind, far too much to go sailing, so he decided to put his boat away and head back to El Paso. He stopped by Black Magic before heading south, and he and Pat worked on the shrouds -- we're looking at replacing turnbuckles at the very least and possibly at replacing the shrouds completely. We made plans to do more boat restoration next weekend, including new bottom paint at least on the parts of the keel that got patched. In the meantime, we can get the three-inch bolts and a few other bits of hardware we need. Top of the agenda for next weekend is completely redoing the outhaul on Black Magic so we can depower more effectively in a gust. There have been a lot of those lately.
Zorro is super-eager about all of these repairs and refurbishments, because he really, really wants to see Black Magic racing next weekend. And I do have to admit, I'm excited about seeing my boat finally getting back into a condition where she can sail well. But I'm feeling ambiguous about actually racing. I'm not sure I want to support the RGSC's current leadership -- the current commodore who, when he was vice commodore, tried to call meetings of the board even though the club constitution doesn't give him that power, and on shorter notice than even those who have the power are permitted to do; Zorro's replacement as race committee chairman to whom I gave the blog nickname "Space Invader" because of his creepy behavior toward me even before I learned of the New Mexico court records about him and the many restraining orders women have taken out against him; the club management that failed to notify one of our favorite restaurant owners that the sailing club was planning to hold a skippers' meeting in the restaurant's back room and thereby royally pissed off the restaurant owner ... I don't know that I want to race and thereby seem to support the current club leadership.
I think I'd rather just go sailing. And wear my new shoes.
OK, I've been accused of trying to turn this into a food blog. It does seem lately that I've been digressing into food-related matters. Well, here's another digression -- and everybody is invited to go foodie.
The origin of this writing project is an assignment in my Essay Writing class. During the term, the students write two in-class essays as a way of learning how to take essay exams -- preparation, time management, and those sorts of skills. The students are given readings on the essay topics and discuss them in class ahead of time, and then on the day of the in-class essay, they have the whole two-hour class period to write the essay in the form of an open-book, open-note exam.
Because I believe students write better when the topic is something they care about, I let them choose the in-class essay topics each term. Usually, the topics are fairly standard issues: DWI, the death penalty, same-sex marriage, and the like. This term, however, the students chose two unusual topics: Egypt and cuisine.
Egypt is a challenging topic because it's such a rapidly moving target. One of the students has proven to be a great resource in class discussions -- her husband is Egyptian and they lived there for seven years. With the insights she provided, the students had really good background to write their essays.
And then there's cuisine. There are all sorts of directions a writer could go with that one. The readings I gave the students included an article about the revival of home cooking and a very, very scholarly treatise from the James Beard Institute.
By the time I got done writing the essay prompt, I realized I had some interesting questions that might be fun for more than just my class. So I'm opening it out to my readers in the form of a writing challenge. Pick one of the topics in the essay prompt below and write a blog post about it. Unless you're actually enrolled in a college-prep composition course, you don't need to restrict yourself to the conditions of an essay exam; just write what you want to write about the topic. Once you have written your post, put a link to it in the comments here. Or if you don't have a blog, email your entry to byrnes.carol.anne (at) gmail.com and I will post it here for you. Deadline for entries is March 31.
Essay 4 (in-class)
Choose one of the following topics and write an essay that meets the English 0950 course objectives (clear main idea, good support, consideration for an educated reader, organization, reasonably correct mechanics):
·What is your favorite cuisine? Give details to explain why.
·Define “American cuisine.” What sets American cuisine apart from others?
·How does the enjoyment of food bring people together? Give examples from your own experience and/or from materials you have read.
·Red or green? Explain.
·Write a review of your favorite restaurant. Use details and examples to show the reader why he or she should eat there.
·In what way does the cuisine of a country or region reflect its culture? Show the connection using specific details.
It's a good thing that in dreams one never gets full ...
I had a dream, in which my high school classmates were celebrating a reunion. Yeah, you know this is going to be fun with the classmates I have!
The high point of the reunion was a progressive dinner in the finer restaurants in old Santa Fe -- apparently the planners of the reunion couldn't decide on one, so they picked four: one for appetizers, one for soup and salad, one for the main course, and one for dessert. So we were a couple of hundred people traipsing around the narrow streets from one gourmet haven to another.
The appetizer course was a buffet with lots of tasty tidbits, mostly seafood-themed.
The soup-and-salad course featured French onion soup, with gobs of gooey cheese on top.
The main course was cabrito, slow-simmered birria-style, with spicy seasonings.
Dessert was another buffet, with plenty of yummy bites of this and that, some sweet, some tangy, some chocolaty, some creamy, some crunchy, some chewy, but -- ooh-la-la! -- one dish stole the show: mascarpone and raspberry filled ravioli with white chocolate sauce. Now, I've never heard of a restaurant here in New Mexico (or anywhere else either, for that matter) serving mascarpone and raspberry filled ravioli with white chocolate sauce, but it does sound like something the trendy, upscale restaurants in old Santa Fe would come up with.
When I woke up, the big toe joint on my right foot was aching, as if I actually had been on a walking tour of Santa Fe (or the way it aches when the weather is about to change), and I was drooling.
(And, no, these aren't actual pictures of the food I dreamed, just the closest approximations I could find on the Internet. The cabrito is very similar to the dream, but I couldn't find exactly the right ravioli picture.)
Five years ago, Pat got me a sailboat for Valentine's Day. This year, it's something a bit different. And it's RED! And this, too, is better than flowers or chocolates.
Way back, eons ago, when I was taking journalism classes in college, one of the courses I took was in page design. In that class, I learned about the dread “tombstone,” when two adjacent headlines on the page seem to merge into each other, conveying an unintended, often humorous and/or macabre meaning. With modern page-layout software, tombstones seldom happen anymore, since page designers have considerable flexibility and can make sure that two headlines are offset enough not to appear connected. But in the old days, that was not always the case. The headlines were written by copy-editors, who often knew only what typeface and size the page designer had specified, not where on the page the particular headline would appear. And if the newspaper was large enough to have more than one copy-editor, two adjacent stories could easily have headlines written by two different people.
Nowadays, tombstones don’t happen so often in a newspaper. Most often, it’s not two adjacent news stories, but the juxtaposition of a news story with an advertisement, since the news and advertising are produced in two different departments with little, if any, coordination between them. The most memorable such tombstone that I can recall came in late 2008. On the day following the election of Barack Obama, the Albuquerque Journal had published a front page making note of the historical nature of the event. A few days later, the Journal ran a reproduction of that front page, on page A4, in full, glorious color. On that same day, Macy’s ran a full-page, full-color ad launching its Christmas sales. Because of the way newspaper printing presses are set up, only some pages in a section can have full color, and the result was that the Macy’s ad was on page A5, directly facing the front page reproduction. Thus, page A4 had the headline “Obama Wins!” while page A5 had the headline “Yes, Virginia, there Is a Santa Claus!”
Harlean often comments about the vagaries of the English language, as well as about how people misuse it. I am afraid I will have to agree to disagree with her on punctuation associated with closing quote marks (she insists on being logical, while I must stick with the rules of American Standard Written English, even if said rules are illogical, if for no other reason than that I have to make sure my students produce writing that conforms with the standard). But most of what she says, I do agree with, and her observations go beyond mere grammar. I found myself especially amused (translated into tweetspeak, that means ROTFL) with her recent post on Why I Love Spam. No, she doesn’t enjoy junk emails any more than anybody else does. But she does look in her spambox on a regular basis. Maybe she originally did it to make sure that her email filter hadn’t accidentally sent some non-spam there, but now, she likes to look for the juxtapositions in which the subject lines of two adjacent spams accidentally make a humorous phrase. She calls these juxtapositions “chunks,” but really, they’re the same thing as the old tombstones. Here are some examples that she cites:
“Want those stretch marks to vanish? Conquer the language barrier”
“Improve Your Sex Life! Nursing Assistant Courses Online”
“Your kidney failure may Earn generous revenue online”
“men have experienced bigger Sprouts in as little as 5 days”
“Begin a rewarding career with Secrets of scoring with women”
“When Wall Street crashes We can keep your male instrument”
“Asbestos exposure is shown to Enlarge your penis in a safe way”
“Express your feelings in an elegant way Quit talking and start shagging”
Yes, once again, National Cat Herders Day, December 15, approaches. What are you going to do to celebrate the day?
To make the holiday even easier to celebrate this year, I have established an event on Facebook where we can all share our festivities. Are you organizing a project to help homeless cats? Participating in a feral cat capture-neuter-release program? Volunteering at your local animal shelter? Kicking back to enjoy the holiday season with the cats in your household, whether you have one or many?
Or are you more of a figurative cat-herder, trying to get holiday plans to come together, with shopping and decorating and cooking and entertaining and and whatever else is on your agenda? Pour yourself a shot of eggnog and take a break from the chaos.
Seaside Community College is hosting the regional spelling bee, and English instructor Hannah Montgomery has been asked to be one of the judges. From the beginning, everything just seems to go wrong – contestants fall ill, parents bicker, the newspaper misprints the publicity press releases, the major sponsor withdraws its support, and the weather takes an unusually stormy turn. Then, to top it all off, it is discovered that all of the gas lines underneath the college campus are leaking and need emergency repairs. What more can go wrong?
Well, if Hannah’s around, you know a dead body’s going to turn up somewhere.
