Day 241, November 12, 2020
First Kiss (mostly)
There's curry cooking on the stove, one of my traditional fall meals. It is a simple no-recipe recipe, where you just cut up some chicken (or beef) and brown it in some oil, add onions, garlic, carrots, potatoes, red pepper, and then cover with water and simmer until tender, and then break in half a box of Golden Curry bricks, and mix until sufficiently curry-like. Serve over rice.
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| That notebook is 10-15 years old I think. |
It is one of those meals from my childhood that I can reliably replicate. We don't always realize how rare that is... that replication of memory. Something as simple as fast-food french fries... I think after the bad oils were banned, or maybe when people started worrying about additives, or salt, or what ever it is... they don't seem to compare to the crispy favor of childhood. I feel the same with Kentucky Fried Chicken (sorry Jamie!). It always tastes different than I remember.
I wonder what things remain. Maybe those miniature donuts that were made by a donut machine in the indoor flea market... maybe if you found one of those, it would be still the same. Or, maybe the peppers and sausage at the outdoor flea market. I wonder what other things are like that?
I remember my first kiss, in Maria's car when I was a freshman (or was I a sophomore?) in high school. I couldn't believe that there would be anything better than that. Who could imagine the exhilaration, of a life without intimate kissing, and then forever after, life after intimate kissing. It is as stark a demarcation as anything I can imagine.
I don't think I will ever be able to truly replicate the meals of my childhood, and I wonder if part of the problem is that attempt to replicate something that is unreplicable. I will never be fourteen or fifteen again sitting in the passenger side of an Olds 88. We broke up soon after that (apparently the kiss was not as momentous for Maria), and she left for college that summer and did amazing things (I think she told me she tried sky diving). I was just a lost puppy at the time.
My mom revealed that she did not know how to cook Korean food and had to teach herself. I wonder if that is why her food is so unique and unlike any other Korean food I get at restaurants or when I visit other people's houses. So, maybe I am going about it all wrong. Maybe I need to stop trying to replicate the tastes of my childhood and try to make something new, focusing on things that I think taste better and feel good. Who would want to be a wayward 14 or 15 year old again?
Maria was in my Chef's Class, in the Home Ec wing. That's where I met her. I tried to impress her with my pancake making skills. The thing she knew how to make was spaghetti with homemade sauce. She was proud of it. I let her know I was interested by walking with her to her next class, then waiting until her class got out and walking with her to her next-next class, and doing it again until the end of the day. My friend Wallace, whose sister was in the 12th grade with Maria told me that she liked me, but I needed to stop following her from class to class. And that was the start of our torrid affair, which, except for that kiss in the Olds, was mostly about discreetly holding hands and hugging. I imagine, she might have been frustrated, because to me, hugging was the most amazing sensation I had ever experienced and I could not fathom anything more. It must have been that way for each thing, holding hands, hugging, the kiss. Innocence is so wonderfully and painfully beautiful. Who could have known that it would be years before I kissed another girl.
So, here's to the invention of new recipes, new traditions. This holiday season looks like it will be very different from every one that has preceded it. I'm not really sure what shape it will take at our house yet, there are still different pieces at play, children contemplating travel, competing visions of menu items, and a total uncertainty of scale... will it just be us two bent over Hungry Man turkey television dinners, or will there be an indeterminate number of children at the table and a freshly baked turkey of uncertain size? In moments it makes me sad and a little forlorn, but I spoke with a colleague today. He said that with the recent positive news about a vaccine, he suddenly has hopeful again and said that it helped him have some perspective. If there is at least one, but probably more than one workable vaccine, then it is just a matter of months, and he figures, for a few more months, he can continue doing what he is doing so everyone can stay healthy and alive. It would be silly to risk it all for just a few months. He quoted Senator John Kerry, "...how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die because of a mistake?" It is now suddenly all avoidable.
And that felt hopeful to me.
I'll have many more opportunities to wish you a good holiday season, but like the grocery stores and pharmacies, I guess I'm a little early in the mode, and I hope you find new temporary traditions and ways to celebrate the holidays that are memorable enough that years from now you will tell stories about the year of the pandemic, and show photographs, and people will gather around and stare in amazement, or look with a fond nostalgia at the travails of a bygone era.
Take care and be well,
Leo
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| A portrait of large heavy objects that I no longer own. |
From Our Friends:
From the It Gets Better Project:
Stories From Around the World to Brighten Your Day
This week, we're celebrating Nevada's new protections for marriage equality, the importance of a few words in Biden's historic speech, and a beautiful trans love story on Star Trek.
LGBTQ+ Candidates Won Big on Election Night
From Sarah McBride to Mondaire Jones, LGBTQ+ candidates won big last week, bringing to total number of LGBTQ+ elected officials to an all-time historic high.
From Sarah McBride to Mondaire Jones, LGBTQ+ candidates won big last week, bringing to total number of LGBTQ+ elected officials to an all-time historic high.
From EducationAdminWebAdvisor:
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From the American Council on Education:
Revisiting Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education |
Earlier this week, data was presented in a just-released 2020 supplement to ACE's Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education: A Status Report. The latest analysis delves deeper into pre-college experiences, graduate and professional education, student loan debt, and postsecondary faculty and staff. Learn more at www.equityinhighered.org. |
From Inside Higher Ed:
A group of new liberal arts college presidents of color has formed an alliance to collectively address issues of racial diversity, equity and inclusion on their campuses. »
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Colleges and universities are making progress on efforts to serve disabled students, but some advocates and scholars say higher ed has been slow to recognize disability as an identity group or include it in programming around diversity and inclusion. »
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From JFF Horizons:
EPISODE 3 Race and Education: Past, Present, and Future Wednesday, November 18 · 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. ET · YouTube Live |
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| The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted racial inequities that have long pervaded our education and workforce systems. On November 18, JFF Vice President Michael Collins will discuss these trends in a one-on-one conversation with John Simpkins, a constitutional scholar and president of MDC. |
From the Vermont Studio Center:
Monday, November 23rd - 7:00 pm
A Featured Artist Talk with Abigail DeVille
Abigail DeVille was born in 1981 in New York, where she lives and works. Maintaining a long-standing interest in marginalized people and places, DeVille creates site-specific immersive installations designed to bring attention to these forgotten stories, such as with the sculpture she built on the site of a former African American burial ground in Harlem.
From the Poetry Center at Smith College:
A Reading by Carmen Giménez Smith
Tuesday, November 17 at 7:30 PM
The timely, searing poems of Carmen Giménez Smith insist on confronting America’s xenophobia and systemic racism. Describing Giménez Smith’s most recent collection, Be Recorder (Graywolf, 2019), the National Book Awards committee praised the ways in which her poetry “turns the increasingly pressing urge to cry out into a dream of rebellion—against compromise, against inertia, against self-delusion, and against the ways the media dream up our complacency in an America that depends on it.” Giménez Smith is the author of five additional collections of poetry, including Milk and Filth, which was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, and celebrated by Publishers Weekly for the way that its images “challenge classist, consumerist, and socially polite forms of feminism." Giménez Smith teaches English at Virginia Tech. She also co-directs CantoMundo, serves as publisher of Noemi Press, and is poetry editor (alongside Stephanie Burt) for The Nation.
Registration Link:
https://smith.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SJhQwvUvTQaHi1fDbhcQlQ
From Mass Humanities:
From Academic Impressions:
The Biden presidency and international education
Article | Inside Higher Ed
It's been a hard four years for supporters of international education. Experts expect a reset in international education policies under Biden, but caution that damage to the once-welcoming image of the United States can't be easily erased.Read more.
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