Our 1943 Christmas

The food was good but the chicken was tough
But we chewed and chewed ’til we had enough
For health and food we all were glad
But best of all we had our Dad

Some hunted, some talked, and some even walked
At doing things for us none even balked
As for the children, naught could be finer
Than to stand in the yard and see the Streamliner

At games, puzzles and cards, all of us played
And far in the night soft beds were made.
The children were tired and sleepy – not cross
And we soon showed them we knew how to boss.

So soon they were sleeping quietly away
And knew nothing more ’til early next day.
While we silly old folks sat till our games were all done
Then we too retired, long, long after one

Next morning was fine and all in a glow
The children went out for a romp in the snow
Then late in the day to their homes they went back
Leaving Grandpa and I alone in our shack

We felt very lonesome and each dropped a tear
Wanting all of our children at home with us here
We can yet hear them calling “Merry Christmas” so clear
“Merry Christmas to you and a Happy New Year.”

12-27-43
Grandma Warner (Anna Warner)

Roasted Butternut Squash and Apple Bisque, that is, as concocted and published by PJ Mullen, who says, and I completely agree, that “a dad’s place is in the kitchen.” I made a big bad batch of this soup today, and my taste-buds are singing!

Like Mullen, my dad did a lot of the home cooking while my mom toiled away at the office. Like Mullen, my dad loved to experiment in the kitchen and was always tweaking recipes, figuring out how to make them better. Unlike Mullen, my dad got stuck on the zucchini end of the squash spectrum, and spent way, way too much time figuring out different things to stuff into them. Unlike Mullen, my dad never got around to butternut squash.

Which is why, having bought several pounds of Maya’s butternut squash, I needed recipe ideas to use it up, and gratefully found myself ogling Mullen’s beautiful bisque. Thick, hearty, creamy, good for you and resonant with the flavors of fall. The longer I watched him make it, the more I had to make my own. And I have to say, after tasting the soup, the vanilla bean was truly a genius move.

Of course, like my dad would have, I tweaked Mullen’s recipe to what I had on hand. I was out of celery, so I threw in an extra apple. I let my onion really caramelize in the pan before adding the apple. Instead of using 6 cups of broth I used four. I replaced the remaining 2 cups of broth called for with the zest and juice of three oranges, because here in Phoenix, citrus is a Fall Flavor, too. I had no fresh ginger, so I tossed in a little ground ginger just before blending the soup. Being too lazy to go get celery, do you think I went and got mascarpone? If you guessed no, you are right. My finishing touch was a simple sprinkle of toasted walnuts on top.

But the soup is it’s-rainy-and-cold-out-and-I-want-something-warm-and comforting-inside-me heaven. We ate it for dinner, I’ve got two more servings in the fridge for later this week, and six more in the freezer for the next rainy day. And a new blog, peaches en risotto, to drool all over whenever I need food ideas.

Kath published some intriguing thoughts about time, the data-body, and outsourced memories along with her video. Her piece begins with a quote from “Time Squared,” a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. Which is kind of funny because when I think about time, I always come back to Delmore Schwartz’ poem Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day, which, of course, provides a big theme for the Star Trek Generations film: Time is the fire in which we burn. And I also come back to Don Charles’ song, “Little Pieces,” performed by D-Squared, which I used as the soundtrack. As Charles says, we’re all just “walking, talking, burning little pieces.” And for the origin of both, you can always look back to Heraclitus.

I can’t help it, friends. He’s still new to us, and it’s a delight getting to know this little guy. I may as well share my delights. I hope you understand.

Sorry about the low light and autofocus. I was afraid he’d wake up if I got up and turned on a spotlight. I justified it – out-of-focus looks like semi-conscious. But it doesn’t. It just looks like amateur. But I don’t care, I got the shot before he woke up.

I used a teensy snippet of music performed by D-Squared. It’s their cover of Buckeye Jim.

This video isn’t meant to defend my point of view or bash the other point of view so much as to present and question this general polarization as it’s playing out between friends and families all over the nation. I mean, we both think we’re right. We’re adamant. We won’t change each others’ minds. We’re just rubbing lime juice and salt in each others’ paper cuts at the moment, instead of more sensibly mixing margaritas and toasting each others’ health.

So I’m calling myself out on the insanity of the discussion. Repeating the same actions and expecting different results.

What can I learn here?

It’s November, which means it’s NaVloPoMo – vlog posting month. I’m going to try to post a short video every day, but I doubt I’ll be able to pull that off this year. Still, it’s worth the attempt. I’ve also joined Ru Howe’s collaborative videoblogging game, in which 30 videobloggers each take one day in November and make a video based on the previous day’s video. Michael Verdi set up a Miro community to aggregate the results of the game. You can subscribe to it, or go there at the end of November to see the whole game as a completed collaborative film.

We’re doing this in the park in the center of Clarkdale, Arizona. The funny thing – after we finished a curious woman approached us. She turned out to be an anthropologist who specialized in human recreation. She really wanted to know what we were doing! After we told her, she explained that children in nearly every culture invent games to alter their state of consciousness. She just didn’t expect to find adults doing it in her local park.

It’s silly but I was really worried about this when I planted my watermelons back in February. I’ve never grown them before. I had no idea how big this variety gets, and no idea how to decide whether the melon was ripe. I was really worried I would waste my first, great big watermelon by either harvesting it while it was unripe, or accidentally letting it rot by not picking it in time. Hurray for the internet!

I learned there are three things to look for:

1. The tendril:  When the tendril closest to the melon dries up and turns brown, you know the plant is no longer sending water to the melon. It’s not going to get any larger from this point on. (Use common sense here: if the leaves are dried up, too, that’s water stress, not ripeness.)
2. The creamy spot:  There should be a creamy white or yellow spot where the watermelon rests against the ground. (This presumes you haven’t disturbed its natural orientation.) My husband says the spot should be yellow, not white, but as he’s never grown watermelon either, and hasn’t cited any source, I have know way of judging the credibility of that statement. (Yes, I fact-check my hubby.)
3. The sound:  The melon should sound hollow when you hold it to your ear and thump it. Personally, this is the most difficult test for me, because I grew up eating watermelon from the grocery store, where they are all presumably ripe. They certainly all sounded the same to me. But growing my own, I was able to thump the young ‘uns and compare that sound to the ripe melon. So now I think I’ve got this part down.

The video was shot with my iPhone on July 20. Unfortunately I never got to share this watermelon with my Mom as intended. We forgot to eat it while she was in town. Fortunately, since I harvested this one, I got four more, so I’ll be taking a couple up to her house this weekend. They are SO good. And I love this one-or-two-serving-size variety – it makes much more sense for a small household.

This will be one of my last garden reports for this growing season, if not the very last. As you’ll see in the video, my poor plants are frying in the intense 115˚F heat.

Now, the daunting task of unloading this thing and figuring out where it all goes, or whether we keep it, sell it, donate it, burn it, or what … well, it has me genuinely looking upon this thing and its contents as a bit of a monster.

On one hand, there are some seriously cool things to be found in a home continuously owned by one family since 1956. For instance, this killer slide projector, made in Chicago forty or more years ago. It works, I got it free, they don’t make them durable like this any more, and I can finally look at all the slides my parents took in the 1960s.

Today, I unpacked a gorgeous KitchenAid stand mixer that I can’t wait to try out. Like most things from Gary’s mom’s house, it came with all the attachments and undamaged instructions (not that these things are difficult to figure out how to use). I had to rearrange some of the kitchen to make room for it, but it’ll be well worth it.

Then, there are the items I unwrap and think, “Really? No. Really!? There couldn’t have been a garage sale? This was worth storing for two years and then shipping cross-country?” (Side note: for some reason I really want to ship this off to Jennifer Proctor.) But I recognize that, when you just want to get home, it’s easier to put it all in boxes and deal with it later.

Later is today.

Ryanne and Verdi get their FreeVlog dolls! from laureng on Vimeo.

Jeffrey Taylor and I ambushed Ryanne and Verdi with the dolls that Cheryl and Rupert made for them, as thanks for freevlog.org ~laureng

So Ru Howe and I brainstormed an idea for an Open Source Online Video Award. Something anyone can give to anyone involved in online video. No awards shows. No voting. No approval process. No bullshit. Someone does something with online video that you think is wonderful or weird or amazing or moving? You can give them an award for it. We were thinking the only thing we’d ask is that people giving an award actually take the time to present a physical token of some sort, like a certificate or a little trophy. And that award recipients make time within a few months or a year to give out another award, so that it keeps going.

We thought we’d start it by giving an award for Outstanding Services to the Videoblogging Community and give it to Ryanne and Verdi for making Freevlog. The intention was to send it anonymously, so they wouldn’t know who’d done it, they’d just get the award. We had half-baked plans to mail the award to, say, a relative in a tiny rural town, who could post the final packages in the hopes that Ryanne and Verdi would never figure out where the award really came from. Like a Valentine from a Secret Admirer.

We enlisted Jeffrey Taylor to deliver our “trophies” at the Open Video Conference this weekend. There couldn’t be a more perfect place to give out the first Open Source Online Video Award.

Unfortunately, the anonymous part of the plan was lost in translation, and the award collaborators stand revealed. Best to just own up and take credit for the plan. It wasn’t an extraordinarily well executed plan, it didn’t have any pomp or circumstance. But it was accomplished with the characteristic authenticity – blemishes and all – that I love so much about videobloggers. Congratulations to Ryanne and Verdi on your award, such as it is, and thank you for your immeasurable services to the videoblogging community. You are appreciated. We just wanted you to know.

Of course, this video made all the hours it took to make doll hair well worth it! I’m grateful to Jeffrey for remembering to mention that my mom helped make the dolls. And if Ryanne and Verdi want a graphic to show off their award, here it is:

My friend Linda is retiring from full-time teaching this year. To help celebrate, my friend Rachel and I made a digital story for Linda.

We were asked to create a video about Linda’s impact on the Australia/New Zealand Study Abroad program, which Linda and Rachel created as a result of their work with Digital Storytelling. Rachel and I realized the story could not just be about the international cultural exchange program, that it needed to encompass the power of storytelling as well. To get a look at the big picture, so we could distill it, we tried to map out, on a whiteboard, the entire series of events that culminated with an international exchange focused on indigenous culture. There were too many events, though, so we mapped what felt like the truly essential pieces.

We could easily have made an hour-long documentary film with all the material collected over the last ten years or so. Linda went on a sabbatical where she traveled the world interviewing storytellers. Linda and Rachel have taught Digital Storytelling classes for several years, impacting the lives of hundreds of students. They also teach the process to faculty, sometimes with my help. And the international exchange has been ongoing for the last four summers. We’ve also hosted at least four return visits. The metaphor of ripples helped us distill this material, and the impact of Linda in particular, to its utter essence, and into this 5-minute story.

We both felt it would be inappropriate to narrate, and instead we chose to let the stories do the talking. We excerpted them, but did not edit them, which means we left the voices and visuals intact. We added a bit of text, and some beautiful photos to accompany our words. We connected the dots of “aha” moments and experiences. We chose not to worry if anyone else “gets it.” This video is for Linda, and she gets it. If you feel it as a summation of years, instead of a linear narrative, you’ll get it.