Month: April 2011

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Editing, Writing, and Proofing—Oh My!

Term-Paper-Under-Construction3I’ve been called upon to do one of my favorite things: proofread my daughter’s final papers for school. I really enjoy this. She’s a great writer already, so reading her papers is a pleasure, especially compared to the writing of other students, regardless of their level of education. I’ve honestly been quite surprised at the dismal writing that most students offer their professors.

Today, she is finishing a paper on gender roles and stereotypes as demonstrated in Junot Díaz’ The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Jhumpa Lahiri’s unaccustomed Earth, both of which I have read. (Great books! I was pleased with both, especially Oscar Wao, since I work with Hispanics.)

Sophia reads me sections of her paper and asks for advice about word choice (“Mom, what’s another way to say, ‘provocatively’?”) or phrasing (“I don’t like how this is worded. Can I say this a different way?”), though most of the time she’s right on the money. She writes thought-provoking papers that inevitably raise questions, and I like that.

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A day without sunshine…

Memorial Day 05-Deviled Eggs (Irma calls them ...

Image by Old Shoe Woman via Flickr

is a day in LaGrange. Another day of rain. We had a two day respite, and now we’re supposed to get up to one half inch of rain every day this week.

Easter dinner was great though. Ham, mashed potatoes, pasta salad, corn, deviled eggs, rolls, jello and dirt pudding. Yum.

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Blooming!

Vicki's Flowers 002

These are the flowers I planted last fall at Chris and Vicki’s! Daffodils and Hyacinths. Just in time for Easter, although it’s supposed to rain again tomorrow. Yuck. Too bad Easter isn’t today.

Planting bulbs is always an exercise in faith. You have these dry, onion-like objects, that you put into the ground in the fall (for spring-blooming flowers, that is) and they stay in the ground all winter long, during the cold and snow. There’s always the chance that the soil isn’t good for them, too wet or not enough drainage. They might get eaten by an animal, or just dug up and planted somewhere else. (We found some in the back yard!) But then in the spring, up they come! Hooray!

And just look at all these related articles about spring flowers. They’re so inspiring.

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Making cupcakes

Cupcake BakerI bought Sophia, as a Christmas present, something called “The Original Cupcake Baker.” Today, Good Friday, we’re using it for the first time. We’re making the cupcakes for Easter, instead of Lamb Cake. I was tempted to put coconut on them, but Sophia says her boyfriend won’t eat them then (he hates coconut).

I was a little worried, because at Brett’s, they don’t have a cake rack, and I forgot to bring one. But lambcake5lofortunately, the small diameter of the mini cupcakes makes them less liable to sogginess. So far, they are quite yummy!

P.S. Update at 7:46 pm: 5 dozen cupcakes, and 2 dozen each of blueberry and cranberry orange muffins. Fits of Domesticity!

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Stuff Catholics Like: Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday 001Oh yeah, bring on the Palms. It’s the craft of crafts, for the King of Kings! Hosanna!

Back when I was a kid, and went to a Catholic parochial school where actual sisters taught, there was a whole palm crafting culture going. Nowadays, most people just seem to take them home and tuck them behind their crucifix or portraits of dead relatives.

But not I! I actually make stuff out of palms—the way I was taught in a small way, but mostly the way I taught myself. A couple of years ago, my old priest, Friar Mark Weaver, OFM, Conv., called for old palms to burn to make the ashes used in the Ash Wednesday service. Most were just that—old palm leaves. But some were really cool—like flowers and intricate braids, so I asked him if I could keep them and figure out how they were made. He said sure and so I went to town. I’ve now elaborated on the braid and turned the top into a cross. I’m excited, but there’s such a short window of time to make things like this before the palms get too dried out. I’m trying to find a distributor so that I can get enough for myself to really learn some things. Naturally, the church only gets enough for people to wave at the start of the service.

But there are still a lot of cultures around the world that make things out of the palms that we get. Slowly, year by year, I’m increasing my repertoire. I’d like to do a class on it next year. We’ll see.

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Living the Laura Ingalls Life

Author Laura Ingalls Wilder used her experienc...

Image via Wikipedia

Or trying to, at least. I was looking around my cluttered apartment this past week and figured, well, Laura Ingalls certainly NEVER had this much stuff. No wonder she got so much accomplished.

I usually re-read These Happy Golden Years at least once yearly, and I think it’s about time. It always puts me in the mood for getting things done. And there’s so much to do at this time of year. Anybody who thinks Christmas is the busy time of the year doesn’t know what country or farm life is like in the Spring.

But fortunately, today is Sunday and so I only have to “work” as a pianist.

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The first time was an accident.

Absolutely the best opening line ever! And it’s mine, all mine! [Air washes hands in mad scientist manner.] Theoretically, it could be used for the opening of a book on any subject, fiction or nonfiction. But today, it’s the opening line of the new sonnet I wrote last night.

The first time was an accident, there can’tfootsie
Be any other way now to explain
The sudden way our eyes met—no, we shan’t
Let something quite like that happen again!
The jolt was like a quick electric spark.
Who would have thought that passing plates around
That table full of people—what a lark
To think that your knee touching mine would ground
Some random static charge—but wait, what’s that?
Is that your hand now, resting on my knee?
I give a sideways glance, conveying, “What
On Earth? What if some table-mate should see?”
The first time was an accident, I’d say.
But accidents don’t happen twice that way.

Did this ever happen to you?

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Might April showers bring something else?

npm2011_poster_200

Of course, that’s not how the rhyme goes. But with any luck, tonight’s rain will bring a shower of poetic inspiration! Because I just found out today that April is National Poetry Month. (The picture at left is this year’s poster. You can click on it to go to the Academy of American Poets website for this event.) So, since it’s raining, which renders it particularly unsuitable for more outdoor pleasures, like gardening, I think I’ll go write some poetry.

It’s been about a year, maybe, since I last wrote a sonnet, which is my preferred form. The mood strikes me from time to time. I wrote this on 4 January 2010.

When inspiration comes, sometimes she finds
Me ready, willing, able, even poised
With pen in hand, no need to coax my mind.
The words fly fast flowing scarcely making choice
So fast they fly I’ve barely time to write
And stumbling now across the sheet they come
Almost unbidden. Such is this delight—
A sweet, unfettered joy—And then I’m dumb-
Struck, dense, and useless, like some rock
That sits unseen beside a less-trod road.
I’ll pace the floor, and pull my hair, and knock
My head again the wall to try to goad…
My mind will not be mined despite how I
Put ev’ry effort forth if soul won’t sigh.

Let’s hope inspiration comes, since I’m poised with pen in hand.

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Stuff Catholics Like: Single Ladies & Beyoncé

Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)Image via Wikipedia

All the single ladies, that is! Put your hands up, hands up! Because if you’re a single lady, and probably going to stay one for any foreseeable future, there is just no better place to be than the Catholic Church! Gobs of single ladies are running around every Catholic parish, because there doesn’t seem to be the stigma of being “gifted with singleness” that you find in Protestant churches. (Shout out here to Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like for developing a Surviving Church as a Single Scorecard.) Instead, being a single Catholic lady puts you in with some great company. Like Mother Teresa, Hildegard of Bingen, and Tasha Tudor! (Wait, she’s not Catholic? Oops! And I think I read somewhere that she did used to be married…yeah, cause she has kids. Crap! Well, two out of three ain’t bad! Well, she’s great anyway. Maybe she should become Catholic!)

Saint Monica ModernBasically, unless you’re a Very Special Married Lady like Saint Monica, or Saint Gianna Molla, but if you want to become a woman saint, you’re going to have to be a single lady. (Good for me!)

I don’t know if Beyoncé had this single lady in mind when she wrote her song, but Saint Catherine of Sienna actually did get a ring! A mystical wedding ring, visible only to her, that she got from Jesus. THAT IS Gianna MollaSO COOL! I wonder if it looked like the one Kate Middleton is sporting now. Nah, probably better, ’cause it actually came from Jesus himself. (And even though the Jesus in my children’s Bible had blond hair, He was definitely not as cute as Prince William, though I guess that’s to be expected, since Isaiah prophesied that Jesus would have, “no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him” (Isaiah 53:2b, New American Bible). I do know that if I starting making noises that I had received a mystical wedding ring from Jesus that was only visible to me, I would probably be put on some kind of special medication only available through a licensed psychiatrist. (Definitely one thing that sucks about not living in the “olden days,” although I think those particular olden days were called the Dark Ages.)

His PrincessThere’s been a lot of chatter over the past few years in Evangelical Protestant circles about seeing Jesus as some kind of Prince Charming, made especially popular in the works of, among others, Sheri Rose Shepherd. But Catholics have, literally, centuries of that stuff to go on. Hey folks, wake up and smell the incense already! I realize that He does ride a white horse in the book of Revelation, but I think seeing Jesus as a Prince Charming is honestly, not even close to good enough. Nope. What are the single ladies then, the Heavenly Harem? I’m not sure about that…

Any church that makes celibacy a requirement for its ministers is bound to have any number of single ladies who, as Protestants, would’ve probably married a minister. Unfortunately, all the ministers are “taken” (as it were) in this denomination, so right there there’s a whole bunch of ladies.

And we even have groups of single ladies, that band together to help each other—they’re called sisters! (You’re only a nun if you’re cloistered, FYI.) Once upon a time, a very long time ago, some ladies joined religious orders because they’d been jilted, but now that’s frowned upon. And too bad, in my opinion. You want an increase in vocations, let those bitter chicks join up, and we’d soon have a lot more stories about kids getting their hands hit with a ruler again. (And probably fewer in jail, but that’s another story!)

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