For years, I've been a beer- and wine-drinker only. Lately, though, I've noticed the craft cocktail bandwagon circling around, and I'm ready to jump aboard. On Friday, a friend had some sort of gin/basil thingy at one of our moderately-hip places, and I was able to recreate it this evening:
Basil-Gin Smash (It really needs a hipster name- like Gin Basilico)
Muddle a handful of fresh basil leaves and 1/2 lemon in a cocktail shaker (it's more effective if you squeeze the lemon juice onto the basil leaves and then muddle and then add the lemon quarters and muddle again);
Add ice; 1 oz simple syrup; and 1 1/2 oz gin to shaker;
Shake vigorously until your hand is like to freeze off (c 30 sec);
Pour over rocks glasses filled with ice;
Garnish with basil leaf.
So, I made some simple syrup this afternoon. That and fresh fruit juices, I think, are key to the awesome cocktail (also true of my craft margarita, which uses fresh lime juice instead of Rose's.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
social norms
Convocation this week. (From the Latin, con = with, vocare = to call --> calling together, assembling). In addition to the president's neoliberal remarks about mission statements (last term it was some nonsense about "every student must succeed" -but what if they choose to skip class and never do the work - is that to be blamed on instructors??), I was paying attention to social norms.
1. Is it normal to put the right palm over the heart for the Star-Spangled Banner? Some did, and some didn't. Did we used to do this for Flag Day back in the 1960s Land of Patriotic Conventions? I don't remember.
2. How is it that students don't know to stand up for a faculty procession, and even when you gesture, they are a bit unwilling?
3. On the other hand, they knew to clap before and after a person came to the podium - upon introduction and upon the conclusion of their remarks.
I'm intrigued by the apparently random transfer of social norms of behavior. My students don't "get" taking off hats in buildings. (A real cultural problem when traveling with them in countries like Italy. They think it is perfectly ok to check phones for texts, and return texts, while they are in a social setting. But they also get the respect for elders and the flag. There is a research paper in all this, I'm sure - but it doesn't have geographical dimensions, other than to say the flag-fetish is an American thing.
1. Is it normal to put the right palm over the heart for the Star-Spangled Banner? Some did, and some didn't. Did we used to do this for Flag Day back in the 1960s Land of Patriotic Conventions? I don't remember.
2. How is it that students don't know to stand up for a faculty procession, and even when you gesture, they are a bit unwilling?
3. On the other hand, they knew to clap before and after a person came to the podium - upon introduction and upon the conclusion of their remarks.
I'm intrigued by the apparently random transfer of social norms of behavior. My students don't "get" taking off hats in buildings. (A real cultural problem when traveling with them in countries like Italy. They think it is perfectly ok to check phones for texts, and return texts, while they are in a social setting. But they also get the respect for elders and the flag. There is a research paper in all this, I'm sure - but it doesn't have geographical dimensions, other than to say the flag-fetish is an American thing.
Monday, August 29, 2011
how I write
This summer I've written lots of lecture notes and online materials, and more recently, the purpose statement for the preliminary round of a national stipend program and a book review.
The lecture note stuff is easy; I just write as though I were writing a blog or in my journal, and then I go back and edit to make sure it's super-clear and the tone is neither too stiff nor too casual.
On the other hand, writing the grant app was tortuous and so was the book review. However, I learned a couple of things about how I write that are worth keeping in mind as I begin to draft a new article. Typically I "write to learn" - that is, I learn what I know about a subject and what I want to say about it by writing it down. However, I'm also a stylist, and so each sentence I write has to be as perfect as I can make it, which means I revise incessantly as I write to learn. And because I really work on diction and end focus, my sentences tend to lead in directions that are hard to change around to where I think I should go next. In a way, this is a fancy way of saying that I'm a better editor than writer. (I think most people are.)
What this means is that it takes FOREVER for me to produce finished work (I started the 700-word book review in May and finished it yesterday) and also that a lot of my writing ultimately gets left on the editing room floor. This is inefficient both from a mental exertion standpoint and from a time-to-finish standpoint. I need to learn to write more quickly and efficiently.
So: two helpful hints I discovered while working on the book review:
1. Even though I'm not big on outlines, my new thing is to make an informal outline, at least of the main content, and then work from it as I write. I have ALWAYS hated outlines - so artificial and stiff! - but some sort of plan for the overall work, even if it's just snippets and phrases, helps me to write more efficiently. In the book review I changed the outline somewhere in the middle of writing, but at least there was a Plan to be changed.
2. With the outline at hand, write it all down as fast as possible. Deliberately write bad, awkward sentences if necessary, just to keep the ideas rolling. (It helps me to have been drinking a little - inhibits the inner editor.) Be as colloquial as necessary just to keep the ideas flowing. But: write in complete sentences; fixing fragments is a pain.
Let's see if this can help me write an article for a planning journal in about a week. My (very ambitious) goal is to get through a rough first draft by next Tuesday. That's ambitious b/c I have to be at school on Wednesday (90 minutes of advising will basically kill the whole day) and then B wants to drive to the State of Insanity (gah!) to see the folks. I can't say no to that (even though we just saw them a couple of weeks ago). Then Labor Day weekend and then, hello, first day of school.
The lecture note stuff is easy; I just write as though I were writing a blog or in my journal, and then I go back and edit to make sure it's super-clear and the tone is neither too stiff nor too casual.
On the other hand, writing the grant app was tortuous and so was the book review. However, I learned a couple of things about how I write that are worth keeping in mind as I begin to draft a new article. Typically I "write to learn" - that is, I learn what I know about a subject and what I want to say about it by writing it down. However, I'm also a stylist, and so each sentence I write has to be as perfect as I can make it, which means I revise incessantly as I write to learn. And because I really work on diction and end focus, my sentences tend to lead in directions that are hard to change around to where I think I should go next. In a way, this is a fancy way of saying that I'm a better editor than writer. (I think most people are.)
What this means is that it takes FOREVER for me to produce finished work (I started the 700-word book review in May and finished it yesterday) and also that a lot of my writing ultimately gets left on the editing room floor. This is inefficient both from a mental exertion standpoint and from a time-to-finish standpoint. I need to learn to write more quickly and efficiently.
So: two helpful hints I discovered while working on the book review:
1. Even though I'm not big on outlines, my new thing is to make an informal outline, at least of the main content, and then work from it as I write. I have ALWAYS hated outlines - so artificial and stiff! - but some sort of plan for the overall work, even if it's just snippets and phrases, helps me to write more efficiently. In the book review I changed the outline somewhere in the middle of writing, but at least there was a Plan to be changed.
2. With the outline at hand, write it all down as fast as possible. Deliberately write bad, awkward sentences if necessary, just to keep the ideas rolling. (It helps me to have been drinking a little - inhibits the inner editor.) Be as colloquial as necessary just to keep the ideas flowing. But: write in complete sentences; fixing fragments is a pain.
Let's see if this can help me write an article for a planning journal in about a week. My (very ambitious) goal is to get through a rough first draft by next Tuesday. That's ambitious b/c I have to be at school on Wednesday (90 minutes of advising will basically kill the whole day) and then B wants to drive to the State of Insanity (gah!) to see the folks. I can't say no to that (even though we just saw them a couple of weeks ago). Then Labor Day weekend and then, hello, first day of school.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Squirrely Bulger
The grey squirrel that visited the gutter outside our BR window every morning at 6:30 am yesterday branched out, first into the other end of the same gutter, then inside the walls somewhere, ending up behind the kitchen sink. That was IT for me.
So we captured him, easy-peasy, using the Havaheart trap and some PB crackers. Then he was "disappeared" into "the Witness Protection Program." The neighbors are actually pretty psyched - he was chewing on their house too, as well as their shed and, they said, eating bird eggs out of a nest in their eaves.
We don't "do" due process and there are no public defenders. Good thing Whitey didn't end up over here.
So we captured him, easy-peasy, using the Havaheart trap and some PB crackers. Then he was "disappeared" into "the Witness Protection Program." The neighbors are actually pretty psyched - he was chewing on their house too, as well as their shed and, they said, eating bird eggs out of a nest in their eaves.
We don't "do" due process and there are no public defenders. Good thing Whitey didn't end up over here.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
winds of change
B is working on his thesis again. When I thought I would get a job in his department, I promised his chair that it would get finished this summer. Well, I didn't get the job and I wish I hadn't promised such a thing that is so out of my personal control.
He's keeping a blog as a way to keep track of progress/achievements/next steps, which I think is a really great idea. Researchers always think they'll remember everything they've been working on, but how quickly and easily we forget. Basically his blog will very easily be turned into a Materials and Methods chapter for the thesis.
In other news, my laptop wouldn't turn on this morning. B was able to take out the hard drive and connect it to our backup drive so as to back up all the files (whew!) but the laptop itself is dead. I have an appointment on Friday with the college laptop fix-it people, and I've already begun to agitate for a new laptop. Mine is 4 years old; I use it at least 16 hours a day; and it's my only computer.
He's keeping a blog as a way to keep track of progress/achievements/next steps, which I think is a really great idea. Researchers always think they'll remember everything they've been working on, but how quickly and easily we forget. Basically his blog will very easily be turned into a Materials and Methods chapter for the thesis.
In other news, my laptop wouldn't turn on this morning. B was able to take out the hard drive and connect it to our backup drive so as to back up all the files (whew!) but the laptop itself is dead. I have an appointment on Friday with the college laptop fix-it people, and I've already begun to agitate for a new laptop. Mine is 4 years old; I use it at least 16 hours a day; and it's my only computer.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
e-portfolios?
Just got a newsletter today with some feature articles about portfolios as a way to encourage students' making their learning their own. We have this feature (e-portfolios) in our learning mgt system (LMS), although I've not used it before.
I like the 3-fold system: students select work that shows their learning; they explain how/why that is; and professors comment.
I like commenting with a pen on student papers (although I have excreble handwriting and sometimes students ask, "what does this say?"). But for longer papers for more advanced students, I also like writing comments on the computer, either as a markup to their papers (if problematic) or as a word document of general comments (if the papers are reasonably good) This only is productive if there aren't too many students. I use this for indep studies and also for the cultural presentation in my World Regional Geog course, in which there are maybe 2-3 student groups presenting every week. I comment less on grammar/typos and more on substantive critical issues. That's the nature of the medium, actually.
I am thinking of pioneering e-portfolios for my week-long study abroad course next spring. Paris! Mostly I do indep studies for this (having less than 5 students) and the course template is already set up well for portfolios, as students do a pre- and post-trip reflection, a project of their own devising, and some mapping and a "review" of a cultural attraction.
I have them read some stuff (I have LOTS of stuff for Paris) and explicitly try to integrate it into a paper. It's a bit artificial, but they HAVE to engage with the ideas of the pieces even if it's unnatural. Teacher-cop: "did you read what I assigned? Show me!" (Surprisingly-to-me this strategy was used in a couple of my doctoral grad seminars. The assignment was to write a reflection/analysis of some papers assigned for the week. If you didn't explicitly work in ALL of them in equal detail, and make them relate, you got marked down. Silly me: I wrote about what grabbed me and skim-wrote about the rest, not understanding that this assignment was about gatekeeping, not intellectual engagement.)
My diss advisor had a similar assignment in HIS seminar, but if you wrote an intelligent 5 pp about one article and ignored the other 3, he was fine with it. RIP. He's been gone just a little more than a year now. Seems like forever.
I like the 3-fold system: students select work that shows their learning; they explain how/why that is; and professors comment.
I like commenting with a pen on student papers (although I have excreble handwriting and sometimes students ask, "what does this say?"). But for longer papers for more advanced students, I also like writing comments on the computer, either as a markup to their papers (if problematic) or as a word document of general comments (if the papers are reasonably good) This only is productive if there aren't too many students. I use this for indep studies and also for the cultural presentation in my World Regional Geog course, in which there are maybe 2-3 student groups presenting every week. I comment less on grammar/typos and more on substantive critical issues. That's the nature of the medium, actually.
I am thinking of pioneering e-portfolios for my week-long study abroad course next spring. Paris! Mostly I do indep studies for this (having less than 5 students) and the course template is already set up well for portfolios, as students do a pre- and post-trip reflection, a project of their own devising, and some mapping and a "review" of a cultural attraction.
I have them read some stuff (I have LOTS of stuff for Paris) and explicitly try to integrate it into a paper. It's a bit artificial, but they HAVE to engage with the ideas of the pieces even if it's unnatural. Teacher-cop: "did you read what I assigned? Show me!" (Surprisingly-to-me this strategy was used in a couple of my doctoral grad seminars. The assignment was to write a reflection/analysis of some papers assigned for the week. If you didn't explicitly work in ALL of them in equal detail, and make them relate, you got marked down. Silly me: I wrote about what grabbed me and skim-wrote about the rest, not understanding that this assignment was about gatekeeping, not intellectual engagement.)
My diss advisor had a similar assignment in HIS seminar, but if you wrote an intelligent 5 pp about one article and ignored the other 3, he was fine with it. RIP. He's been gone just a little more than a year now. Seems like forever.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Administrivia
Our dept is working (in violation of our sacred contract that bestows summer vacation free from required committee work) on tasks that I think the chair was supposed to have assigned during the regular school year. My part of the first task took about 15 minutes, which was less time than it took me to read all the emails from my colleagues opining that we shouldn't have to do this task in the first place.
Three of my colleagues have filled out the mandated paperwork incorrectly, which has already been pointed out via email by our most senior colleague. It's a simple fix, but Senior Colleague chose to read their errors as disagreement with his position, which will probably lead to a bit of hurt feelings.
But the analytical fix (Senior Colleague complains of the lack of analytical rigor in our program and I guess some of the faculty suffer the same malady!) is simple: if you are filling out a course matrix for program planning, the number of boxes with the same unique course options has to be equal to the number of unique course options in the box. That is, "Course A or Course B" can only appear in two boxes. If a student takes Course B the first time, and Course A the second time, then what does she take the THIRD time you list "Course A or Course B"?
For the second task, which has to be done by the chair, no one noticed (or commented) that he is conflating a reporting of what WAS done this year (annual report) with our strategic plan for next year (goals we developed during a very painful session called "faculty retreat"). My question is, will the Dean read closely enough to notice? And if she does, will she kick it back to him for R&R? Or is she just collating this admistrivia and passing it up the chain of command?
Back to course planning, which is infinitely more interesting than all this stuff!
Three of my colleagues have filled out the mandated paperwork incorrectly, which has already been pointed out via email by our most senior colleague. It's a simple fix, but Senior Colleague chose to read their errors as disagreement with his position, which will probably lead to a bit of hurt feelings.
But the analytical fix (Senior Colleague complains of the lack of analytical rigor in our program and I guess some of the faculty suffer the same malady!) is simple: if you are filling out a course matrix for program planning, the number of boxes with the same unique course options has to be equal to the number of unique course options in the box. That is, "Course A or Course B" can only appear in two boxes. If a student takes Course B the first time, and Course A the second time, then what does she take the THIRD time you list "Course A or Course B"?
For the second task, which has to be done by the chair, no one noticed (or commented) that he is conflating a reporting of what WAS done this year (annual report) with our strategic plan for next year (goals we developed during a very painful session called "faculty retreat"). My question is, will the Dean read closely enough to notice? And if she does, will she kick it back to him for R&R? Or is she just collating this admistrivia and passing it up the chain of command?
Back to course planning, which is infinitely more interesting than all this stuff!
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