Peg Duthie's Blog, page 56

Monday notes

Listening to: the USA Today stream of clips from Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer's "Child Ballads" album (link via my friend Katy). Between that and the severe weather making the sky so very grey, I'm inclined to spend the afternoon working on fairy-tale riffs (but tax prep is calling, calling).

Reading: the Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook. Pages 374-75 provide pleasingly detailed advice on buying fresh shrimp:

When buying shrimp with heads, note that they spoil quicker and that the heads constitute about 35 percent of the shrimp's weight. So if a recipe calls for 2 pounds of headless shrimp, shells on, buy almost 2 3/4 pounds whole shrimp with shells to compensate.

Keep in mind that a shrimp's shell and legs make up about 12 percent of its weight, so if you're using peeled shrimp in a recipe that calls for 2 pounds headless shrimp, shells on, you'll require only 88 percent of that weight, or about 1 3/4 pounds.

Today's lunchtime reading was a couple of sections of yesterday's New York Times. I was struck by two mentions of historians brought to tears, both within Dan Barry's article about the Jackie Clarke collection in Ireland. In the first, Barry speculates on prize artifacts that would have changed Sinead McCoole's initially low expectations of the collection:

Was it the fabric flower, called a cockade, that Wolfe Tone -- Wolfe Tone! -- wore affixed to his hat when he was captured while leading a failed rebellion against the English in 1798? When Ms. McCoole showed the cockade to a scholar friend steeped in that era, the scholar began to weep.

The other immediately reminded me of how difficult it can be to define and observe the scope of academic projects (...and, really, projects in any sphere, but as you might guess, scope comes up a lot in academic publishing):

Often, as Ms. McCoole set out to begin another wearying day of academic mining, one of the fish shop's employees, Smokey Gorman, would give her a cryptic greeting: "And you haven’t even gotten to the roof yet." For a while she thought this meant that Mr. Gorman might have spent too much time in the smokehouse, but Mrs. Clarke eventually told her that Mr. Gorman was referring to some "modern stuff" that he once helped Jackie Clarke carry to a storeroom built onto the roof.

One day, with the end of her papered tunnel in sight, Ms. McCoole went to that room on the roof, where loads of bundles were wrapped in relatively recent copies of the local newspaper. Inconsequential modern stuff, she thought. But when she opened a bundle or two, she found rare political pamphlets and newspapers dating to the 17th and 18th centuries.

"Instead of being euphoric, I cried for two days," Ms. McCoole said. “I cried and I cried and I cried. It was just more things to do. I knew the job hadn't ended."

But when she recovered Ms. McCoole realized that she was immersed in something very rare and wonderful, a feeling now validated by other scholars.

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Dublin (from November 2011)

I had a fine view at Bewley's of both my companion and some of the art on the wall...

( more photos under the cut )



"Love locks" on the Ha'penny Bridge

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"I simply know different things from what you know."

It's been a week where I removed myself from one conversation and unfollowed a half-dozen people because I cannot let myself get snarled into open-ended firefights over sexism if I'm going to meet my next deadline (and the three on its heels), and yet, and yet...

*seethes*

So this leaped out at me when I peeked over at Eileen Tabios's blog, where she talks about reading a collective autobiography whose authors include Lyn Hejinian:

Two of the male poets asked her if she'd read this other author and she'd felt the question to be a "test" .... I get this. I know this. While not proposing acrimony, I am reminded of several conversations with males and male poets, including one with an older, male poet wherein, at one point, I told him, "You do not know more than I do. I simply know different things from what you know."

In happier news: I sold a poem this week (fourth acceptance of the year; first one I'll receive cash for), my publisher sent me a royalty update a few hours ago, and I'm tickled at the company said book is currently keeping over at Amazon (it has been purchased in tandem with books by Neal Stephenson and Merrie Haskell [the latter is currently giving away copies of her new book and pretty bits of goat, by the way], and it is for the moment on a Top 10 list with Janet Wong, Cathy Park Hong, and Maxine Hong Kingston).

Also, it was 68 degrees F when I went hiking this afternoon. The turtles were out in force, and we also spotted a huge wild turkey and tiny little flowers.

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"You are the first chaplain who would ever pray with me."

Last night's bathtub reading was some of the Spring 2013 issue of UU World. I was pleased to see a feature on UU military chaplains, in part because my church ordained one of them (Azande Sosa) a year or two ago. Two excerpts:

[Rev. Sarah Lammert, on a shift in UU attitudes toward the military:] People began to understand that you could be for or against a war without being against the people who serve the country.

[Rev. Chris] Antal [a National Guard chaplain in Afghanistan] emphasizes the importance of having religiously liberal chaplains in the military. Partly it's about those soldiers who might be unchurched or hold beliefs that are out of the mainstream, including those who are pagan. "Soldiers have told me, 'You are the first chaplain who would ever pray with me,'" Antal said.

He added, "I've been able to do all kinds of meaningful ministry in the past year, especially after 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' was repealed last year. Not only does the Army need chaplains, it needs liberal chaplains to balance the overwhelming number of evangelicals within chaplaincy. When we, as a denomination, walked away from the military after Vietnam, the vacuum was filled by others."

Antal said that many soldiers are open to different approaches to religion. "When people face the actuality of war and combat and the possibility of death, they start to search their souls. They want to be prepared."

Congregations have a role too, he said. "Soldiers need to be welcomed when they come to church. Suicide rates of veterans are off the charts. Our congregations and our country as a whole share a moral responsibility to be open to the military. They are working on our behalf."

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"recycled as a pincushion, nothing wasted"

The subject line's from Leslie C. Chang's "Animism," which is the poem that resonated with me the most in Things That No Longer Delight Me, in part because seeing "Ahquen" reminded me of

Now, like smoke, thread
trails from a needle stuck in the candle-end
you recycled as a pincushion, nothing wasted.

I am out of rice, so I am baking cornbread. I plan to heat up black beans and andouille sausages in a bit.

I bought a can of Chinese preserved clams a while back, I think by mistake (it's the same size and color as the tins of Chinese pickled cucumbers I'm addicted to). I do like clams, so I was looking forward to trying them anyway -- but they are the most unappetizing-looking thing I've sampled in some time (think gray-green bits of rubber with fat antennae), and they don't taste enough like something worth adding to scrambled eggs or soup or salad.

My friend Lora wrote about plants and dirt earlier today. I about laughed myself sick over the part about driving around after a wedding shower, and the last paragraph is a sounder guide to living than most of the theology I've come across this week.

I am bargaining with myself over the container roses that are reportedly on sale at Kroger this week. I'm thinking if I walk to the nearest store (which is just far enough away for me to feel like blowing it off, especially with a deadline on my neck), I could treat myself...

[Since starting this entry, the BYM's come home and I've finished cooking the bread, the beans, and the sausages. Time to wrap this up, fill my plate, and get back to work.]

[I haven't forgotten about posting more about Charleston. Turns out even that was too ambitious for this fortnight. But I have a list. I'll get to it eventually.]

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three people highlighted the last three words...

...of this passage in my library e-copy of Nikki Giovanni's Bicycles:

In order to properly care for things
They must be loved
And touched

- "Give It a Go?"

Giovanni, Nikki (2009-01-09). Bicycles: Love Poems (p. 35). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

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"salt in the pond / for your fish"

The subject line's from Nikki Giovanni's "I am Jazz," which is in Bicycles: Love Poems, which I am reading tonight because my e-book loan expires in a couple of days.

I am cooking: "Company Carrots" (recipe from Charleston Receipts Repeats), a riff on parmesan black pepper coleslaw (because both parmesan and cabbage were on sale at the supermarket), and pork chops.

I am listening to TFS's "Blackest Crow," via Nathalie. Sxip Shirley: "The girls started singing 'The Blackest Crow' and it was like a mute volume hit the party. The party went SILENT and people listened to the women sing and it felt like that...LISTENING TO THE WOMEN SING."

Back to the stove, back to the knife, back to the pen and the paring life... ;-)

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"the rocks are a refuge for badgers"

Tulip in my front yard, about a year ago

Praise, O my heart, to you, O Source of Life,
you are my tide of joy, my sea, my shore,
my field of sky with stars that never set;
now I will learn your wonders all my days,
and my vain ways in darkness be no more.

- Ridgely Torrence, lyrics to a UU hymn (#284 in SLT) set by Robert L. Sanders. Truth be told, the melody resonates with me much more than the text, but in any case, it's what I've been in the mood to play when I sit at the piano to rehearse. The chamber choir will be singing a setting of Jane Hirshfield's Hope and Love in a couple of weeks.

[The subject line is from Psalm 104 (RSV), which was the inspiration for Torrence's text.]

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"I have other things to say, but shall not detain you much."

The subject line is from John Ashbery's "Sleepers Awake," which also contains the line "Never go out in a boat with an author -- they cannot tell when they are over water." It's in the July 1995 issue of Poetry, which I have been rereading while in the bathtub.

Back in 1995, the poem that grabbed me the most was Linda Pastan's Nocturnal (I scrawled a note on the cover -- "broadside?" -- which means that I was thinking of creating a calligraphic copy of it, and I was also smitten with Robert B. Shaw's essay on Katherine Bucknell's edition of Auden's juvenilia -- especially this statement: "Here is one major lesson this book offers apprentice poets: read widely and imitate fearlessly."

It is the first issue in which Christian Wiman's poetry appears. The back inside cover is dedicated to Jane Kenyon, who had recently passed away: "Yes, long shadows go out / from the bales; and yes, the soul / must part from the body..." Claudia Emerson was publishing as "Claudia Emerson Andrews" then.

And this time around, the poem that resonates with me the most is Ted Kooser's "New Moon": I want to be better at carrying sorrow.



In other news, I rode around ten miles today on my bike. I got lost twice, walked up parts of two hills (not strong enough yet), walked down one (it was steep, and a schoolbus had just zipped by uncomfortably close to me, so I decided that hopping off and calming the heck down with my feet on the ground was the better part of valor), smiled at various doggies (including a standard poodle and some pug puppies), and listened to the bullfrogs in the marshy patches. They are loud. Thirteen days until spring...

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Avery and McLaughlin, THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY

Just received my copy of The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals, a book I copyedited last year. I really like the cover.

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