Resolutions for 2013

Holdovers from 2012 • De-clutter third floor • Chez Panisse Vegetables • Paint fence • Hire handyman to fix mailbox • Make placemats and napkins • Read The Places that Scare You 2013—35 THINGS IN 365 DAYS 1. Begin cooking from Modernist Cuisine 2. Begin yoga 3. Begin “calendar consciousness” 4. Begin a Christmas letter (month by month) 5. Begin a cooking/crafts blog 6. Change passwords 7. Begin monthly dinners with Nancy 8. Take a painting class 9. Make mole 10. Host a game night (3 times) 11. Join David on Mexican Mile 12. Make romantic plans 13. Be in more contact with M, W, S, and R 14. Begin scattering Sherman’s ashes 15. Send out recipes 16. Read the Square Foot Gardening book 17. Investigate being a poll watcher/worker 18. Begin a 5,000 page summer 19. Have front lilac bush trimmed 20. Have back lilac bushes removed 21. Clear off canning shelves 22. Quilt two gifts for Christmas 23. Touch up paint on steps and floors 24. Hang quilts 25. Revamp quilt room 26. Host a dinner party (3 times) 27. Do a solo trip 28. Get a mammogram 29. Take a quilting class 30. Plan more picnics 31. Look into timing of a Pour Party 32. Try new canning recipes 33. Donate mugs 34. Add more shelves to cellar 35. Take a cooking class

Resolutions 2012...The Results

1. De-clutter third floor--Somehow, I was so eager to do this, and it never got done... 2. Begin A Year with Rilke--I bought this book, read it each morning for a week and discovered I still don't like anything-a-day 3. Begin Chez Panisse Vegetables--bought this book too, haven't used it as much as I expected. 4. Exercise outdoors 4-5 times a week--Success! 5. Plan more seriously for Meatless Mondays--This went in spurts, but overall we did eat healthier. 6. Eat dinners at the table w/ flowers and/or candles 3 times a week--Here, again, I realized I liked the idea of this more than actually doing it. 7. Listen to more jazz/classical--Success! 8. Dental cleaning every 6 months--Success! 9. De-grease kitchen cabinets and jars--Success! 10. Read a “serious” gardening bookNope. Weirdly, did not even buy a serious gardening book 11. Try making ginger soda--Success! 12. Have tree guy in--Success! 13. Have a dinner party(in January)--Success! 14. Begin Mindful Movements--Success! 15. Learn something about soil chemistry--Bought the testing kits, but that's as far as that went. 16. Smoke a turkey--Success! 17. Update coursework w/ ESC--In progress...need a few more credits for the next salary step. 18. Divide the irises--Divided half of them. 19. Build some sort of “potato structures”--Did this. Didn't get many potatoes, but I'll try it again. 20. Paint fence--Started, but need to put it on list again. 21. Hire handyman to replace lattice and fix mailbox --We replaced the lattice ourselves. The mailbox is still on a tilt. 22. Dig out old mint and replace w/ new varietiesSuccess! 23. Have a dinner party(in April)--Nope. 24. Attempt to grow potatoes--Did the attempt. 25. Paint pots for the garden--Nope. 26. Plant a tree or two--Planted two dwarf peach trees in front 27. Clean up the “thistle bed” and replant w/ herbs or flowers--Nope. Ok, this space is about 3x2. Why it's such a pain is a mystery. 28. Read 4-5 “hard” books for the summer (Look Homeward, Angel; In the Time of Our Singing, Cloud Atlas, etc.)--This was a dismal failure I blame on getting a puppy instead. 29. Re-Plan English 10 (or whatever else I may be teaching)--Have a new prep, so yep. Lots of planning! 30. Do three lunches w/ old friends over the summer--Did two, and attempted a third, but... 31. Make placemats and napkins--Nope. Maybe next year! 32. Donate quilt to charity/fundraiser--I did not a lick of quilting all year long. I blame this on the puppy too. 33. Make Christmas gifts for three people--When I wrote this, I was assuming it would be quilting, but instead I gave canned goods to many, many people for Christmas! 34. Read 2-3 methods books--Success! 35. Join a committee or two--Yep. Why did I make this resolution again? 36. Read The Places that Scare You--I thought about doing this many times, but never got around to it. I really should, since I have a "Braver by 50" goal set for myself. This was a great activity and I'm surprised by how many of these I actually got around to. Bring on 2013!

36 Resolutions in 366 Days

Thanks to Suzie Bee for this idea!

Resolutions 2012
January
1. De-clutter third floor
2. Begin A Year with Rilke
3. Begin Chez Panisse Vegetables
4. Exercise outdoors 5 times a week
5. Plan more seriously for Meatless Mondays
6. Eat dinners at the table w/ flowers and/or candles 3 times a week
7. Listen to more jazz/classical
8. Dental cleaning every 6 months
February
9. De-grease kitchen cabinets and jars
10. Read a “serious” gardening book
11. Try making ginger soda
12. Have tree guy in
13. Have a dinner party
14. Begin Mindful Movements
March
15. Learn something about soil chemistry
16. Smoke a turkey
17. Update coursework w/ ESC
18. Divide the irises
April
19. Paint fence
20. Hire handyman to replace lattice and fix mailbox
21. Dig out old mint and replace w/ new varieties
22. Have a dinner party
May
23. Attempt to grow potatoes
24. Paint pots for the garden
25. Plant a tree or two
26. Clean up the “thistle bed” and replant w/ herbs or flowers
June
27. Read 4-5 “hard” books for the summer (Look Homeward, Angel; In the Time of Our Singing, Cloud Atlas, etc.)
28. Re-Plan English 10 (or whatever else I may be teaching)
29. Do three lunches w/ old friends over the summer
30. Make placemats and napkins
July
31. Donate quilt to charity/fundraiser
32. Make Christmas gifts for three people
August
33. Read 2-3 methods books
34. Join a committee or two
September
October
35. Read The Places that Scare You
36. Do something really beautiful
November
December

Summer Reading 6.1-6.16

Officially in the midst of summer. So far, I’m still pretty darn close to the 100 pages a day constraint I’ve given myself. I don’t know if I’m learning anything yet about how to get kids more involved with reading, but I am starting to discover some things about how I get to the books I do…

Book Three: The Invisible Bridge—Julie Orringer

In my post about Olive Kitteridge, I said part of what hung me up on this book at first was that it’s structured like a series of short stories. To totally contradict myself, the reason I chose Invisible Bridge is because I read Orringer’s book of short stories several years ago and there is one that has really stuck with me, so when I read in the NY Times book review that she was coming out with a novel, I bought it as part of my summer reading pile.

The first part of this book I found really intriguing. It’s 1938 Hungary and the protagonist, one of three brothers, gets a once in a lifetime opportunity to study architecture. This plot line continues for about the first half of the 600-plus pages. As a reader, you know what is about to happen, but the character is so wound up in his own worries and triumphs, that he is mostly ignoring the collapse of Europe that is happening around him. I think of how this is true for me. I am doing my best—though for different reasons—to ignore the BP fiasco in the gulf. Sometimes the scope of a disaster is so immense and horrifying that you feel powerless in the face of it, so mentally crawl into a hole. It’s not exactly right, and certainly not useful, but part of human nature, I think, all the same.

Obviously, the second part of the book deals with the horrors of the Nazis in Europe, specifically Hungary. It is hard to describe the experience of reading holocaust stories –Orringer bases this novel on the experiences of her grandfather and great-uncle. Tolstoy wrote, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” and that certainly applies here. Still, there is something so eerily similar in all holocaust stories to me. I almost dread reading them for that reason—and maybe that’s the way it should be.

Book Four: The Girl Who Played with Fire –Steig Larsson

Yep, this one’s good too. A bit slower in the middle than the first one, but still excellent. It’s so interesting to me to read 1,200 pages of crime/thriller books in the past couple weeks, since I don’t know anything about this genre. I wonder if I will read others now, and how I would find them. I guess this is getting to part of the reason for the blog—when you don’t normally read this type of book, how do you find others that are just as good?

I finished it on the plan to WI and as we were landing I realized the woman across the aisle was reading the final book in the trilogy and when I asked her if was as good as the others, she said she hadn’t been able to put it down. There is something to be said for 600-plus page books that average readers can plow through in 2-3 days.

Book Five: The Elegance of the Hedgehog—Muriel Barbery

OK, this was the wackiest little book I’ve read in a long time. It alternates between two voices, distinguished by font. One is the too-educated concierge of a hotel and the other a rich, precocious, depressed twelve-and-half year old who’s planning her suicide. (Her voice is a lot like the protagonist of Sophie’s World.) I picked this book up after a friend said she was supposed to be reading it for her book group. We were in Standing Committee at the ESC, and I was planning on stopping at Barnes and Noble on the way home anyway to use up a gift certificate, so that’s how this book ended up on my bookshelf.

It is a book built for English teachers. Both characters are obsessed with literature and punctuation (one of them nearly has a breakdown due to a misplaced comma) and grammar. There is a whole section about the importance/power/beauty of excellent grammar that I think is going to be making an appearance in AP Language next year. I wouldn’t submit most students to this, but the AP Langers discover this sentiment as we go and it’s amazing to find such a lovely articulation of it.

Next on deck: The Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks. I don’t know how it is that most of the books I bought for my summer reading list are over 600 pages, but, here we go!

Summer Reading 5.28-5.31

I have been looking for a purpose/theme for the summer for the past few weeks. I know, it says something that I can’t just relax and enjoy it—but hardly any of us get ten weeks a year to play with and I don’t want to waste mine totally on naps and FB. So, besides the gardening and quilting, this summer I want to really focus on my reading… and by focus I don’t mean just spend time on it, but really think about how it is I choose the books I do and what the experience of reading is like for me. (I am also giving myself a daily page “assignment.”)

Why do this? Some of my colleagues and I have spoken this spring about getting our students to read more. And if you’re not a reader to start with by high school there are a couple major hurtles you have to overcome. One, how to do you find books you’re gonna like? Two, what do people actually get out of reading? I mean why do it? Why don’t readers find reading boring?

As much as I read, I’m not really sure how to answer these questions. Thus, this.

Book One: Olive Kitteridge—Elizabeth Strout

I started this book about a week before school let out and did a rather poor job of reading it. I mean, it was a book I read a couple pages here and there before falling asleep -- sometimes after a couple glasses of wine. I opened it on more than one occasion with the bookmark stuck in a completely random spot where it was when I konked out for the night. The only part of the book I read well was the last 100 pages or so—which I mostly read at my desk on the last teacher duty day of the year when I had to come in, but had nothing officially to do.

My description of this book was that it seemed like the sort of book I normally like—simple, country story with down to earth people, in the vein of Wendell Berry or Kent Haruf—but that I wasn’t that in to these characters. In part, that might be not only because of how I read the book, but because of its form. It’s a series of interconnected short stories that circle around the main character, Olive. Sort of like Winesburg, Ohio or Spoon River Anthology. By the end of the book, I liked it a lot better…almost to the point that I feel guilty for not reading the beginning better. [Right now, I’m finding it interesting how many other books I’m connecting to this book in trying to describe it….]

How did I choose this book? I bought it a few months ago at CostCo. I’d heard about it for a while, read reviews, knew it won the Pulitzer, but the form kept me from being interested in it earlier. There are very few short story collections I’ve enjoyed reading, which is weird because I love essay collections. Eventually, I got this book because it seemed like a book I “should” read, plus I am addicted to the book tables at CostCo and wasn’t really finding much else there that day. I chose to read the book this spring because it’s short and at the end of the school year I didn’t want to make a huge commitment.

Book Two: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo—Steig Larsson

This book is in high contrast to Olive in a couple ways: one, I read it in essentially three sittings—the first of which got me through 350 pages. (Total decadence!) The second contrast, which is implied already, is that this is a book of 590 pages—a summer read—when I have hours to spare and can mentally tackle “big books.” In fact, I bought this book on Amazon (along with some others) the last Monday of the school year; they were my prize for making it another year and part of my transition into summer. The thought of their impending arrival kept me going in those last long days.

I bought this book, again in a way, because I felt it was a book I “should” read—not because of awards, but because so many readers I know have read it—the AP reader I trained with this winter, women at the English Standing Committee, friends, people I see reading in public…. I wanted to be part of the conversation. The night before I started the book a friend who’d read it told me she wished it had been shorter and that there were parts she skipped through in order to get back to the plot. I had this in my mind as I started the book, but that wasn’t really my experience. In fact, last night I told David that what I really like about this book are the characters—the plot itself is interesting, but like Dan Brown books, you don’t want to analyze the plot too much or you’ll ruin your experience of reading the book. It’s definitely been a fun, start-of-summer read.