Posts
Sunday, March 23, 2025
If we empty ourselves of ourselves
A writer is like a tuning fork: We respond when we’re struck by something. The thing is to pay attention, to be ready for radical empathy. If we empty ourselves of ourselves we’ll be able to vibrate in synchrony with something deep and powerful. If we’re lucky we’ll transmit a strong pure note, one that isn’t ours, but which passes through us. If we’re lucky, it will be a note that reverberates and expands, one that other people will hear and understand.
ROXANA ROBINSON
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Mexican Casserole
One pound of pressure-cooked kidney beans (previously soaked overnight), with Adobo added after cooking. One inch stack of corn tortillas. Cholula hot sauce, half a dozen eggs beaten with a splash of buttermilk, one 4-ounce chunk of sharp cheddar, grated.
Directions: in one large or two (oiled) small casserole dishes layer the kidney beans and corn tortillas like a lasagna. I cut the extra tortillas with scissors to shred them and add them. Then beat the eggs, add the buttermilk, divide and pour into the dishes with the beans & tortillas. Poke your fingers into the mess to distribute the egg. Top lightly with cheese and Cholula hot sauce. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes to an hour depending on what it needs to set the eggs. I used a square Pyrex dish and a round casserole dish. The square pan cooked in 30 minutes and the deeper round dish required an hour.
Enjoy!
I was so excited about how this turned out. It was a sheer accident that I had leftover tortillas and decided to make this with my new batch of beans. I'm glad I had eggs, buttermilk, cheddar and Cholula on hand.
Dreams
I dreamed of Maynard and Mary Louise. I dreamed of my old art studio in the CIC building. I dreamed there was a diorama of a small pink room and a miniature whiskey bottle and a light bulb that lit up when we thought of the dead person. I dreamed I was swimming with frogs and snakes in a pond in Vermont.
Friday, March 21, 2025
Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Olive Oil Olives Spinach and Garlic (variation on Aglio e Olio)
I added a pound of (defrosted) spinach, chopped olives, chopped red onion, sauteed garlic in olive oil, Sriracha + soy sauce (for umami) Chianti, pesto and Asiago cheese.
Magnifique!
Why Define Teaching by William H Calhoun
If teachers don't define teaching for themselves, others will, and quite likely to the detriment of teachers. The problem is that the "wrong" definition of teaching can harm and interfere with a teacher's ability to really teach. What is a "wrong" description of teaching? Here are just a few examples: babysitting, coaching, facilitating, managing, providing services, delivering curriculum, the inverse of learning. Why are these descriptions wrong? Because the focus is either on behavior control or delivery of instruction, but not at all on what can be described as engagement.
There are two problems. Delivery of instruction includes designing instructional materials and designing tests. Both of these activities can be done on a corporate or academic level by experts, with an eye toward monopolizing, automating, and monetizing such activity. Teachers are just expected to deliver the canned curriculum to students. And much of what could be thought of as engagement is instead thought of as classroom management, often resulting in, at worst, moralistic or belittling approaches to control and discipline. Behavior modification approaches are an improvement, but best would be a sociological approach to adjusting student behavior, directly and indirectly, in the service of engagement.
Teachers need to engage to be effective. The key to this is understanding how a teacher's stagecraft and presence can help students interact with instructional materials. While discipline first, instruction second is a common recipe, it results unfortunately in poor outcomes. Instructional materials cannot teach themselves. Without an engaging teacher, any student is simply self-taught, for better or worse.
https://www.whcalhoun.com/
On the Street
The report showed up on the front page. One sister tried to strangle the other in a fit of rage on the city sidewalk at the neighborhood convenience store. There's a chance the aggressor will go to the women's prison. The sisters and another woman have been my neighbors for about 6 years.
When they first arrived they were feral, no eye contact, virtually mute. They were homeless before coming here. The sister who had been attacked was disabled. The sisters are also twins. Over the course of a few years they all became more comfortable and adopted a few dogs and found jobs and bought a car. They seemed happy and would chat over the fence. They had become part of the community.
The report continued. The care-giving sister had gone on a tirade and choked the other in public for
being caught stealing from the local convenience store. I assume the twin by now has been placed in a
group home or institution. The whole story is tragic and it unfolded
right here in our backyard. Perhaps they will get the help they
need. I hope so.
I grew up in the tony suburbs where it was all concealed behind manicured lawns and Gothic doors. When things happened we heard about it later, sometimes decades later but rarely in real time. The suicides, the key parties, the beatings, the child-molesting parents, neighbors and teachers. A blacked-out drunk who thought he was murdering his parents killed a new couple that had moved into his childhood home. Powerful emotions have no class boundaries.
A Strip of Siding
A strip of aluminum siding came off the roof of the apartment house behind us and landed in our yard. I told that building's landlord about it. Then I moved the strip of aluminum into the alley so my dog would not cut himself when walking around the yard.
The recent rainstorm caused a racket. It was the aluminum piece catching the downpour from the house next door, keeping the neighbors awake. This morning I went out in the rain and moved it again to the edge of the shared parking lot. I hope to give it to the recycling man.
I feel helpless about the toxic political climate but I can move a piece of aluminum out of the rain so my neighbors can have a good night's sleep.
Jennifer Finney Boylan
What is a trans woman, really?
“Scooby-Doo” offers a lesson about the riddle of gender identity.
The key word in this revelation is “really,” the adverb that means “what something is in actual fact, as opposed to what it might have been appearing, or pretending, to be.”
I’m willing to accept the fact that Mr. Withers was not who he had been pretending to be. But in other instances, “really” has (as the “Scooby-Doo” theme song goes) “some work to do now.” Is Clark Kent “really” Superman? Is Bob Dylan “really” Robert Zimmerman? Was Mark Twain “really” Samuel Clemens?
Is a butterfly “really” a caterpillar?
These questions matter to me, as a transgender woman, because the Trump administration’s attacks on us are, in some ways, founded on the supposition that women like me are “really” men. Whenever I hear, for instance, the simplistic edict that there should be “no men in women’s sports,” my first instinct is to agree. Because transgender women are not “really” men. We are women. We may have different histories than other women, but then, every woman has her own history.
Donald Trump’s election has released a tide of vitriol against transgender people (and women in particular; most of our nemeses seem oblivious to the existence of trans men). The silence of our alleged allies this last month has been stunning to me, and some of our allies have even volunteered to throw us under the bus in hopes of rebranding themselves as mainstream. Does Gavin Newsom — who came out against trans women in sports last week — really think that the MAGA base will embrace him now? Or is it possible that conservatives will see him as “really” a liberal? Hmm, let’s think.
This last week, a House subcommittee hearing on arms control went off the rails when its chair, Rep. Keith Self, (R-Texas) introduced Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Delaware) as “Mr. McBride.” Rep. Bill Keating, the ranking Democrat, asked, “Mr. Chairman, have you no decency?” Rather than addressing Congresswoman McBride by her proper title, Self adjourned the hearing.
Presumably, calling the congresswoman from Delaware “Mister” was more important to Self than arms control, international security or American support for Europe, which had been the issues the committee had been scheduled to address.
At one time, the phrase used to describe trans women like me was “a woman trapped in a man’s body.” There were all sorts of issues with that formulation, but in its simplicity, it made a clean case: Trans women were women in spirit and soul and sensibility (and, many would argue, brain structure and function); they suffered from a medical condition, like multiple sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease, a condition that anyone might be born with — even Republicans! — and which could be treated by medical intervention, leaving the woman post-transition as a woman very much like other women, with the exception of her remarkable history.
The current blowback against trans women holds the opposite view — that people like me are “really” men, and no matter what sorts of surgical interventions take place, nothing can alter the fundamental assignment of sex at birth. That’s what’s behind the oddly phrased executive order declaring sex immutable and fixed at conception. “God doesn’t make mistakes,” is a phrase often aimed at people like me, as if to accuse me of being the gender equivalent of old man Withers.
It is worth observing that many of the people scolding me about God not making mistakes are wearing glasses. Or hearing aids. Or have pacemakers. So far as I know, no one accuses someone wearing glasses or hearing aids of fraudulence, or sees the existence of someone saved by a heart-monitoring implant as an affront to divine intentions.
The challenge for trans people, and our allies, is that many of our antagonists cannot imagine what it might be like to be wired the way we are. I still remember when I came out, 25 years ago, telling a friend that I’d had a lifelong sense of myself as female — that this impulse had dominated my waking life for 40 years — and her response was to dismissively shrug and say, “Well, I can’t imagine that,” as if her inability to imagine the life of someone like me was my problem rather than hers.
Our problem is that “No men in women’s sports” or “There are only two sexes” make great bumper stickers. In such simple phrases they seem to capture an inarguable truth. “Common sense” is what the president calls it. But just because arguments against trans people’s right to exist are easy to make, that does not make them any less wrong. What is difficult is that understanding how folks like me experience the world takes time and thoughtfulness. Not to mention decency.
The greatest obstacle to trans equality is not Donald Trump or even Elon Musk — whose inability to love his own transgender child may well be part of what has driven him to fight what he calls the “woke mind virus.” Whenever I hear Musk berating trans people, my first thought is to have pity: This is a man, above all, with a broken heart, a man hurting because he wrongly thinks that something valuable — a son — has been taken from him.
No, none of these are the greatest obstacles for acceptance. The greatest obstacle for us is a lack of imagination.
By which I mean, only a person without imagination could think that Superman is “really” Clark Kent. Only a person without imagination could think that a butterfly is “really” a caterpillar. Or that a trans woman is “really” a man.
Without imagination, it is easy to believe in things that are simple, and superficial, and wrong.
With it, we can begin to understand the lives of those who are different from ourselves — and respond to their struggles with compassion, and kindness and grace.
Boston has stood up for the people we love and the country we built, and we’re not stopping now
She returned from her performance riding a wave of support from residents, many of who expressed pride in her defense of Boston. She heavily leaned into the message she shared with Congress in her speech on Wednesday night, proclaiming that “the state of our city is strong, and we have to be.”
Wu emphasized that the federal administration’s policies are harming many people who are central to the city’s fabric, including the LGBTQ+ community, academics and scientists, and researchers and innovators.
“Boston is the target in this fight for our future, because we are the cradle of democracy, pioneers of the public good, the stewards and keepers of the American dream,” she said. “We were built on the values this federal administration seeks to tear down.”
“But for 395 years, come high water or hell, no matter who threatens to bring it, Boston has stood up for the people we love and the country we built, and we’re not stopping now,” she continued. “No one tells Boston how to take care of our own, not kings, and not presidents who think they are kings.”
She ended her speech with a bold statement: “God save whoever messes with Boston.”
concocting fictions with utter seriousness
I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist’s job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories—stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
“Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we
imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become
it.”
― The War of Art
― The War of Art
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Cornmeal Buttermilk Pancakes
These are so good we ate the whole batch for dinner!
Ingredients
¾ cup unbleached all purpose flour (I use whole wheat)
¾ cup yellow cornmeal
2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1¼ cups buttermilk
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, cooled (I use corn oil)
vegetable oil
Step 1
Sift first 6 ingredients into large bowl. Whisk buttermilk, eggs and melted butter in medium bowl to blend. Add buttermilk mixture to dry ingredients and whisk until blended and smooth.
Step 2
Preheat oven to 300°. Lightly coat bottom of heavy large skillet with oil. Heat over medium heat. Working in batches, pour ¼ cup batter into skillet for each pancake. Cook until bottoms are golden, about 1½ minutes. Turn pancakes and cook until second sides are golden, about 1 minute. Transfer to baking sheet; place in oven to keep warm. Repeat with remaining batter, adding more oil to skillet as necessary.
https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/cornmeal-buttermilk-pancakes
August Wilson
When I first started writing plays I couldn’t write good dialogue because I didn’t respect how black people talked. I thought that in order to make art out of their dialogue I had to change it, make it into something different. Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking.
August Wilson
Monday, March 17, 2025
The Illusion
I just give the illusion of exposing myself, but really, I'm not exposed at all. There's a real me that's inside my diary, and then there's a character of me. Whenever you write about yourself, real people live in the world, and characters live on the page, and you become a character.
David Sedaris